As reported by the Informationsdienst Wissenschaft , Continental intends to use its collaboration with the DFKI both to optimize its internal processes and to advance the mobility of the future, especially concepts for autonomous vehicles. To this end, the company and the research institute want to set up a research laboratory for intelligent technologies (FIT) at DFKI’s Kaiserslautern site. Continental employees will work together with the scientists of the DFKI on basic research, but also tackle specific problems. For Continental, DFKI is the most recent of a number of cooperation partners, including technology companies Nvidia and Baidu , Oxford University , Darmstadt Technical University and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (India).

Continental has already begun to develop a platform for highly automated driving with the AI processor manufacturer Nvidia. The two cooperation partners want to create a system that enables autonomous driving without permanent monitoring by the driver by 2021. 360-degree environment detection, automatic lane change, and threading into traffic will then be controlled by the vehicles independently, but the human drivers will still have the option to intervene. The long-term goal is technology where vehicles can be driven entirely without pedals and steering wheel. "We currently assume that autonomous driving will not be possible without artificial intelligence technology," said Kurt Lehmann, Corporate Technology Officer at Continental.