Nvidia and Continental are partnering to create self-driving vehicle systems built using Nvidia’s Drive platform for a targeted introduction beginning in 2021.
The partnership will allow for the building of artificial intelligence computer systems that scale from automated Level 2 features through full Level 5 self-driving capabilities where there is no steering wheel or pedals.
Engineers from both companies will develop the self-driving solution using the Drive platform that includes Nvidia’s Drive Xavier system-on-chip, Drive operating system and Drive autonomous vehicle software stacks. These will be combined with Continental’s system and software engineering for ASIL-D rated safety and sensor technology, including radar, camera and high-resolution 3D LiDAR.
Nvidia says the Drive Xavier chip can deliver 30 trillion operations per second (TOPS) for deep learning while only consuming 30 watts of energy. The company says this performance can handle the processing need for self-driving vehicles such as deep neural networks to sense surroundings, understand their environment, localize the vehicle on an HD map, predict the behavior and position of other objects, compute vehicle dynamics and plan a safe path forward.
The first steps in the collaboration will include a 360-degree perception and automatic lane changing on highways, plus the ability to merge in traffic. The initial system will also include HD maps to allow vehicles to localize themselves and provide map updates.
