Cerence AI has announced that its collaboration with Geely, one of China's largest automakers, is expanding from intelligent cockpits to embodied robotics. The two companies are working together to advance multilingual human-machine interaction for robotics applications, bringing Cerence's production-proven speech and conversational AI technologies into physical AI. The work makes its public debut at the Paris Motor Show.
Key takeaways
- Scope shift: Cerence's relationship with Geely moves from automotive cockpits to service robotics, marking an early step toward intuitive interaction across next-generation physical AI systems.
- Multilingual capability: Cerence AI's speech recognition supports French, English and Mandarin simultaneously, allowing users to interact in their preferred language without interrupting the experience.
- Real-world focus: The companies frame natural interaction as critical as intelligent machines move from controlled environments into settings where they assist customers, support workers or engage the public.
- Automotive heritage: The robotics solutions draw on decades of voice and AI work in the automotive industry, aimed at helping machines listen, understand and respond reliably across languages, environments and use cases.
Christian Mentz, chief revenue officer at Cerence AI, said the company has for decades helped people communicate naturally with the machines they rely on daily, and that the Geely collaboration brings proven human-machine interaction technologies into the emerging robotics space. The move reflects Cerence's continued expansion beyond automotive and underscores the growing importance of natural, multilingual interaction as intelligent systems become more integrated into everyday life. For manufacturers deploying service and collaborative robots in multilingual facilities, the pairing of automotive-grade speech stacks with robotics platforms is a signal that voice interfaces are being positioned as a standard layer of human-robot collaboration rather than a cockpit-only feature.
Source: Robotics & Automation News · Published 2026-10-22T17:02:00 · “Cerence AI and Geely expand partnership from cars to robots”