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US-based vehicle technology integrator Local Motors has introduced its first autonomous vehicle, called Olli, which is integrated with advanced cognitive computing capabilities of IBM Watson.

The electric vehicle can carry up to 12 passengers and is equipped with IBM Watson Internet of Things (IoT) for Automotive to improve the passenger experience, and allow natural interaction with the vehicle.

Olli is beginning to be used on public roads locally in Washington DC, and by late 2016, it will operate on the roads of Miami-Dade County and Las Vegas.

Local Motors CEO and co-founder John B. Rogers, Jr said: “Olli offers a smart, safe and sustainable transportation solution that is long overdue.

“Olli offers a smart, safe and sustainable transportation solution that is long overdue.”

“Olli with Watson acts as our entry into the world of self-driving vehicles, something we’ve been quietly working on with our co-creative community for the past year.

“We are now ready to accelerate the adoption of this technology and apply it to nearly every vehicle in our current portfolio and those in the very near future. I’m thrilled to see what our open community will do with the latest in advanced vehicle technology.”

Olli is the first autonomous vehicle to make use of cloud-based cognitive computing capability of IBM Watson Internet of Things (IoT) to analyse and learn from high volumes of transportation data, generated by more than 30 sensors embedded throughout the vehicle.

Further, the platform leverages four Watson developer APIs, speech to text, natural language classifier, entity extraction and text to speech, for seamless interactions between the vehicle and passengers.

Image: The self-driving vehicle, Olli. Photo: Courtesy of Local Motors Inc.