NVIDIA, the world leader in visual computing technologies has partnered with automotive technology company Continental to develop AI systems in self-driving vehicles using the NVIDIA DRIVE platform. Through use of the platform, autonomous features will scale to full Level-5 self-driving at which point the vehicle is without pedals and a steering wheel. In advance of that, a Level-3 market introduction is planned for 2021.
Working together the two companies will build and develop self-driving solutions from the NVIDIA DRIVE platform while leveraging NVIDIA DRIVE Xavier, the highest performance system-on-a-chip. Able to deliver 30 trillion operations per second while using only 30 watts of energy Xavier will serve as the brain of Continental’s systems.
“The vehicle of the future will be a sensing, planning and acting computer on wheels. The complexity of autonomous driving requires nothing less than the full computational horsepower of an AI supercomputer,” said Dr. Elmar Degenhart, CEO of Continental.
While NVIDIA supplies the software, Continental uses their expertise with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) like fish-eye cameras with surround view, short and long-range laser sensors, and 3D LiDAR technology. Together the companies immediately plan to develop 360-degree perception, the ability to merge in traffic, and automatic highway lane changing, then move to integrating HD maps so the vehicle can provide mapping updates and localize itself.
