Ather Announces New Smart Voice Assistant, AI-Powered Safety Features

Ather CEO Tarun Mehta delivered a keynote speech at the company’s annual Community Day gathering, outlining its vision for the next generation of scooters and bikes for Indian consumers. Along with its new EL platform and multi-pronged approach to designing for different types of customers, several new software features were unveiled. 

Several of the features announced today will be coming to current Ather owners via over-the-air updates, as part of the AtherStack 7 software ecosystem. Most notably, Ather bikes will now support voice commands, when used with the Ather Halo smart helmet or Halo Bit attachment. The company says it has developed its own large-language model (LLM) which is optimised for Indian speech patterns and dialects.

Ather’s demonstrations were all in English, and when asked specifically by ACKO Drive about other Indian language support, Mehta said “To begin with, I wouldn’t put an immediate timeline [on rolling out other languages] because implementing all these experiences well will take us a good year. Eventually there’s nothing stopping language models from learning local dialects and regional languages but I would put that as a two-year roadmap, not short-term.”

The voice assistant can not only answer user prompts but also provide proactive alerts. Examples of use cases include telling your bike where you want to go, to set a route. Commands can include “Take me to…”, “Let’s go to…”, or something more direct like “Start navigation to…”, among many possibilities. In addition to specific locations, users can set a route to “the nearest Ather charger”, or even ask if their battery level is enough to reach a specific place. Voice commands can also be used to increase or reduce screen brightness, activate bike features, and control music playback.

The company says that voice control will allow users to keep their eyes on the road, and will reduce manual interactions with buttons or a touchscreen, thereby improving safety.

Ather bikes will also be able to give users proactive voice prompts, such as suggesting they enable live location tracking or alerting them to low tyre pressure. These prompts can be based on time of day, weather conditions, or routines that the vehicle learns.

Another new feature is pothole tracking, based on real-world collected intelligence. Ather’s maps will be updated to offer routing based on which roads are smoother, and voice prompts can tell a rider that there are potholes ahead. The company has currently mapped roads in Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, and other cities.

In case of a crash, Ather bikes will be able to automatically alert up to three pre-saved emergency contacts, and send them the bike's live location. The touchscreen can also display this emergency contact information so that bystanders or responders can get in touch with a rider's family or friends.

The new LockSafe feature can alert a user if their locked bike is moved, to help reduce theft. A bike can also be remotely disabled by the owner via the app, even if the person who moved it has a key. The feature won’t instantly disable a bike if it’s moving at high speed or is on a flyover, for example, but will instead safely bring it to a stop. Another feature called ParkSafe can alert users if they have deployed the side stand in an area known for frequent towing or unsafe parking. 

AtherStack 7 features will roll out to the Rizta Z and Ather 450X (Gen 3 and later) in the coming days.