Continental and Nvidia are to jointly develop artificial intelligence self-driving vehicle systems based on the Nvidia Drive platform, which includes Nvidia Drive Xavier – the world’s highest -performance system-on-a-chip – and the Nvidia Drive OS (operating system) and Drive AV (autonomous vehicle) software stacks.
The partnership will enable the production of AI computer systems scaling from automated Level 2 features through to full Level 5 self-driving capabilities, where the vehicle has no steering wheel or pedals.
The dedicated engineering teams from each company will bring together a wealth of knowledge – namely Continental’s experience in system and software engineering for ASIL D rated safety.
“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 Continental CEO, Dr Elmar Degenhart. “Together with the performance and flexibility of Nvidia’s AI self-driving solution, from the cloud to the car we will achieve new levels of safety, comfort and personalization for future vehicles.”
Continental and Nvidia will initially develop highly automated driving features, including 360° perception and automatic lane-changing on highways, plus the ability to merge in traffic. In addition, the system will integrate HD maps, enabling vehicles to localize themselves and provide mapping updates.
The aim is to introduce the technology by 2021 for Level 3 features.