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Harman introduces Sherlock AI system to help its designers and engineers find and put things together more quickly

Harman International, a design and engineering company which supplies a range of products and services to automotive companies, has introduced a new artificial intelligence system into its company.

The AI system, Sherlock, is described as a “virtual colleague” for Harman employees, and is said to have completely redefined the innovation management workflow in some of the company’s divisions.

Armin Prommersberger, senior vice president technology, lifestyle audio division, at Harman, says Sherlock offers a level of insight into the business that would be impossible to gain without it. 

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“It [Sherlock] has a massive layer of transparency,” says Prommersberger. “When we get a report from it, it produces a PDF document. It’s got the data that you were looking for, curated by a human being… but it also gives you all the sources from which it pulled the data.

“There is no way to misinterpret it. This level of transparency is really exciting but it can also induce a little bit of fear.”

Harman, which became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics in March, designs and engineers connected products and solutions for automakers, consumers, and enterprises worldwide, including connected car systems, audio and visual products, enterprise automation solutions and services supporting the internet of things.

The company’s software services power billions of mobile devices and systems that are connected, integrated and secure across all platforms, from work and home to car and mobile.

So it seemed only natural for Harman to solve the AI challenge by developing its own bespoke solution which it calls Sherlock.

Harman says Sherlock has completely redefined the innovation management workflow in the lifestyle audio division.

Sherlock is trained to identify the most valuable information within the wealth of data created every minute around the world.

It carries out targeted market research, and provides guidance on the prospects of future projects based on that data.

It replaces the lengthy manual technology scouting process focused on a few individuals with predictive analytics.

Further, because Sherlock’s results are transparent and shared on the intranet, the program enables closer collaboration between all team members and further streamlines the development process.

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