Volvo Collaborates with Nvidia for Level 2+ Driving

Volvo is working hand in hand with Nvidia on its future cars scheduled to hit the market in the next decade. The automaker will borrow Nvidia’s Drive AGX Xavier platform to be used in its cars.

An earlier collaboration between the two companies stated that artificial intelligence (AI)-equipped cars would start selling in 2021.

Said to be capable of handling level 5 driving (full-scale autonomous) when introduced at the beginning of this year, the Xavier will initially come with level 2+ instead, according both companies.

Xavier would also be utilized for other things like new connectivity features, power management system, and interior personalisation settings.

Volvo and Nvidia want to bring safety and driving comfort to a new level with proper autopilot. They want to build a car that would drive consumers autonomously and carefully. To make it a reality, the most advanced sensor architecture will be needed, as well as “AI software, computing, and safety technology” that are completely new and reliable.

This teamwork is focused on developing “uniquely integrating 360-degree surround perception” and a driver monitoring technology that will spearhead the self-driving system.

According to Nvidia, the Drive AGX Xavier platform can do 30 trillion operations in a second. In addition, it absorbs just 30 watts of electricity across its six processors.

Earlier this year, a similar partnership with Continental was signed by Nvidia that would allow the pair to join forces on new autonomous driving system based on the Drive platform.

Besides Xavier, the American tech company also has the Pegasus platform consisting of two Xavier processors and two TensorCore GPUs. This platform has a capability of 320 trillion operations in a second.

The deal with Volvo was announced during Wednesday’s keynote. Also announced by Nvidia was Rapids, which is a new set of libraries and algorithms for GPU-accelerated analytics and machine learning.