Auto

AI rim design with “FelGAN”

Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) in all departments: this is the goal Audi has set itself on its way to becoming a data-driven company. With FelGAN, the company now employs software that uses artificial intelligence to open up new sources of inspiration for designers.Creative people are always on the lookout for inspiration. The same is true of the designers who create new wheels at the Audi Design Studio in Ingolstadt. But where to find untapped sources of inspiration?The principle to “think outside the box” is both well-known and catchy. But it is less easy to implement, since, in the creative process, people tend to fall back on what is familiar to them. It is this precisely point that the AI-based software FelGAN, an in-house development by Audi’s IT department and Audi Design, addresses. The project is now enabling creatives to draw from a practically unlimited pool of ideas. Interacting with the software lets designers discover motifs from completely new perspectives, giving them suggestions that they can further evolve and work into their creations. In concrete terms, FelGAN works either by rapidly proposing a large number of photo-realistic designs itself or recombining existing designs in a targeted way.In this way, the system acts as a kind of spontaneous idea hub for Audi’s rim design team, allowing them to exchange new versions and variations. The tool lets designers easily experiment with shape, color, surface structure, and other parameters in real time.