Nvidia Joins Forces With Volkswagen, Volvo, And ZF To Accelerate The Adoption Of Driverless Car Tech

Nvidia is continuing its drive into the driverless cars arena with further auto manufacturer deals with Volkswagen, Volvo and ZF.

The extended partnerships should help speed up the development of autonomous driving systems and vehicles, which are already being tested and delivering strong results.

All three automotive companies will tap into Nvidia’s hardware and software platforms use to provide the foundations for the development of self-driving systems.

Driving forward

Nvidia is traditionally though of as a provider of graphics cards for gaming and high-end computing, but it has long provided embedded systems for car infotainment units.

However, the ability for graphics cards to carry out the parallel processing needed to push large amounts of data through deep learning systems that provide the foundations for high level autonomous systems and artificial intelligence (AI), has seen the chipmaker delve into driverless car tech.

Volkswagen will work with Nvidia to harness this technology and explore how autonomous systems can be used to compliment autonomous driving, such as optimise traffic flow in cities. Nvidia’s Metropolis smart city platform could come into play in this case.

“AI is the most powerful technological force of our era,” said Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia.

“Thanks to AI, data centres are changing dramatically and enterprise computing is being reinvented. Nvidia’s deep learning solutions will enable Volkswagen to turn the enormous amounts of information in its data centres into valuable insight, and transform its business.”

Volvo in a joint venture with automotive safety firm Autoliv, will make use of Nvidia’s AI technology as a foundation for its own autonomous software to be used for creating driverelss systems that harness deep learning.

And ZF will use Nvidia’s Drive PX AI platform to create complete self-driving units which car makers can integrate with the cameras and radar system of their commercial and passenger vehicles.

With Nvidia also working on a virtual simulator for the training of AIs and robots, its smart system technology could be finding its way into more than just driverless cars.

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