Audi and Nvidia Working on Fully Autonomous Car for 2020 Rollout

[MacRumors]

Audi and Nvidia have announced they are working together to bring a fully self-driving car to the consumer market by the year 2020.

The announcement came on Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, as the two companies outlined their vision for a fully autonomous vehicle. German automaker Audi hopes to be one of the first automakers to achieve the feat, and is banking on U.S. graphics chipmaker Nvidia's artificial intelligence car computing platform, which uses deep learning to negotiate complex real-road conditions.

Audi's Q7 Piloted Driving Concept.​

"Nvidia is pioneering the use of deep learning AI to revolutionize transportation," Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said. "Audi's adoption of our Drive computing platform will accelerate the introduction of next-generation automated vehicles, moving us closer to a future of greater driving safety and new mobility services."

To offer a taste of the results of their collaboration, Audi has been demoing its Q7 Piloted Driving Concept, which is fitted with Nvidia's Drive PX 2 processor. The companies claim that after four days of "training", equipped vehicles are able to drive themselves over a complex road course, thanks to the PX 2 chip's ability to learn on the fly without recourse to pre-mapped routes.

Audi and Nvidia have been working together for almost a decade, but the announcement at this year's CES is an indication of just how far the collaboration has come. Originally the partnership was limited to using Nvidia's graphics processors in Audi's virtual cockpit and navigation systems, but ambitions have since grown, and Audi said it will begin expanding its testing of the highly automated, artificial intelligence-equipped vehicles on public roads in California and select states in 2018.

For Nvidia's part, the traditionally GPU-focused company has been working on autonomous vehicle systems for several years now and has rolled out development platforms and agreed partnerships with over 80 automakers and suppliers to realize its self-driving goals. In September the company introduced Xavier, a complete AI system on a chip for self-driving cars that's designed to meet international functional safety standards for in-car electronics.

Apple is thought to have refocused its car project recently. The company has shelved plans to build an electric car for now, and is instead working to build a self-driving software platform for use in vehicles made by established automakers. In December of last year, Apple confirmed its interest in the autonomous car market, in a letter to federal regulators urging them to ensure fair competition and equal rights for "new entrants" in the industry.

Article Link: Audi and Nvidia Working on Fully Autonomous Car for 2020 Rollout

 

[tibi08]

Didn't realise Nvidia was a player in this market, let alone a leader. How on earth did they get an edge over Apple with all the cash, talent and other resources it has behind it?

 

[diipii]

Nvidia can. Apple can't. The cool is evaporating faster.

 

[miniyou64]

There is no entity less qualified than government to ensure something is fair.

 

[Supermule]

Finally Elon Musk/Tesla is getting some competition - good for all of us

 

[44267547]

The article states Nividia and Audi have been working together for almost a decade. Wasn't aware of that. This will be one grandiose of a luxury autonomous vehicle if and when it releases.

 

[mike1524]

Didn't realise Nvidia was a player in this market, let alone a leader. How on earth did they get an edge over Apple with all the cash, talent and other resources it has behind it?

That's how automakers work. They rely on suppliers that develop the tech they need anonymously - and serve them as customers, not the end customer. Apple would probably not be humble enough or controllable enough for an automaker to allow itself to depend on them as a single-source.

 

[44267547]

That's how automakers work. They rely on suppliers that develop the tech they need anonymously - and serve them as customers, not the end customer. Apple would probably not be humble enough or controllable enough for an automaker to allow itself to depend on them as a single-source.

I think more specifically, I didn't know Nividia was a contributor to Audi. I'm a huge Audi fan and have been for years. I figured I would have read this somewhere on the Audi forums I frequent.

 

[swingerofbirch]

"New entrants," also known as the company whose Maps app *still* thinks my closest emergency room is a museum (a colonial psychiatric hospital—first in the US) in spite of years of submitting user reports to have them update this info. Also known as the phone company whose software updates have rendered iPhone users unable to make phone calls on a *phone* and have to connect to iTunes.

I can see it now, someone bringing an old laptop out to the driveway to connect the car to iTunes via Lightning, Dock Connector, or the port du jour, to restore the car after a bad software update.

I have loved Apple. I still want to love Apple and hope they turn around. I do not trust Apple when it comes to something as serious as a car.

 

[soupcan]

From keynote : " 10:50PM EST - 'Let's make sure none of our kids ever have to learn to drive' "

Excuse me? You wanna say this is the direction they wanna take humanity in?

I'd rather not thank you. Tesla's Autopilot in its current state is about as far as it should go. Driver assisting, not driver replacing.

 

[jdillings]

The last thing I want is a car that is dependent on Nvidia drivers

 

[mike1524]

Interesting times.
While studying at the aalto university in Helsinki a friend of mine did some theoretical work on machine learning algorithms - one was a proof that a self learning system (where all possible combinations of sensor input is NOT checked and tested) will always make mistakes. As more testing is done (verified "correct" actions to sensor input in the database) the risk of a "false" action goes down - but it will never reach mathematical zero.

 

[CausticSoda]

Didn't realise Nvidia was a player in this market, let alone a leader. How on earth did they get an edge over Apple with all the cash, talent and other resources it has behind it?

Yep - says a lot about Apple, doesn't it? Too much focus on damned watches, thinness and trying to be "cool" etc.

 

[Bacillus]

That's how automakers work. They rely on suppliers that develop the tech they need anonymously - and serve them as customers, not the end customer. Apple would probably not be humble enough or controllable enough for an automaker to allow itself to depend on them as a single-source.

Interesting point you make. Car manufacturers have stopped considering Apple an interesting partner.
CarPlay announcements were abundant but implementation took ages for "some" reason. Just as "inevitable" it was to connect to the world's premier smart phone, corporations found out the burdens (arrogance, egoism, license fees, monopolist attitude)
https://stratechery.com/2014/how-much-will-carplay-cost/
With the ultimate reward: losing the customer's UI to Apple. Car manufacturer recognized that and came to avoid CarPlay as the standard UI across car brands, as it would ease switching over to their competition.
Now after all these lost years, proprietary in-car infotainment has become the same or better than what CarPlay offers (with its crazy limitations) and all Apple pilots with BMW, Daimler Benz etc. became early drop-outs.
As they got their partners raging behind the scenes - they stirred up competition around the dashboard, leaving themselves in the dust !!
I doubt Apple will ever find a partner in the car industry - it has to do it all by itself, at astronomical cost (better wait for a take-over of necessitous Tesla/Lotus)

This TakeItAll/GetNope-approach has parallels in other industries (Music/Entertainment/...)
You might call it the "Eddy Cue"-syndrome

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

Audi's virtual cockpit in the new TT is one of the better car UI's I've seen and used. Unlike the Tesla UI and touch hardware that looks like it's a TV turned on its side and lobbed into the middle of the dashboard without a sense of class and sesitivity of design—design being an area where Apple could show Tesla a thing or two. Even the Tesla company logo and car glyph look like they were designed by a first-year design student or a teenager who watched Tron the night previous and thought 'this font looks futuristic' and then "borrowed" from a couple of companies on the glyph.

These tree planters at the front of this Apple Store—not to mention the store—are better designed; more elegant than anything Tesla has ever graced us with.

Touch to enlarge:

 

[markosb]

For it to be fully auto, all cars on the road would need to talk to each other. It will be a while before that happens. I thInk it would be cool to take a nap on a longer drive, but not with current assistant auto drives.

From keynote : " 10:50PM EST - 'Let's make sure none of our kids ever have to learn to drive' "

Excuse me? You wanna say this is the direction they wanna take humanity in?

I'd rather not thank you. Tesla's Autopilot in its current state is about as far as it should go. Driver assisting, not driver replacing.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Yep - says a lot about Apple, doesn't it? Too much focus on damned watches, thinness and trying to be "cool" etc.

Well, it would be one thing IF Apple was actually focused on watches... or any of it's products. But it's really just farting out ordinary product these days and spraying with flowery descriptions to cover up the stink. AirPods might be the lone exception of late - a truly neat and buzz worthy product. (Yes, not without faults, but even great products are not perfect first gen).

 

[CausticSoda]

Well, it would be one thing IF Apple was actually focused on watches... or any of it's products. But it's really just farting out ordinary product these days and spraying with flowery descriptions to cover up the stink. AirPods might be the lone exception of late - a truly neat and buzz worthy product. (Yes, not without faults, but even great products are not perfect first gen).

So true - my Airpods are the one Apple thing I am really happy with at the moment!

 

[needfx]

How many CUDA cores will that have?

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

For it to be fully auto, all cars on the road would need to talk to each other.

How did you conclude that? For it to be 95% auto it just needs cameras and smarts and hardware to read the road conditions, weather, road signs and markings and use GPS and good safety pratices and be able to react faster than a human, irrespective of how the next car is operated. I'm reserving 5% for edge cases where the car would pull over to the side of the road if it sense a lack of understandable road markings and other cases.

 

[ikramerica]

How many children will be plowed over before this lunacy will stop? How will the AI decide if the child's life is worth it when it might cause an accident to swerve, assuming the car sees the kid in time (known problem with the systems so far). Will the government be actively involved in certifying a system that chooses to run over a toddler "for the greater good"?

Also, how do you tell the car where to park on your driveway, how to avoid flooding, how to navigate tire level obstacles? How to prevent the car from taking you up a road closed in bad weather and stranding you? You hear stories of clueless people following GPS into danger, what happens when the car does it itself and you can't stop it?

 

[CmdrLaForge]

Cool. Looking forward to my self driving Audi in 2020 then!

 

[Bug-Creator]

It will be decades before self driving cars make it onto the road for legal reason alone.

What might be available in 3 years are cars that will crash on their own at your fault.

 

[rippley5150]

I guess the days of driving down the street in in a '69 GTO Judge getting 2 miles per gallon and sounding like god is coming at ya are over...sadly.

 

[Romy90210]

Didn't realise Nvidia was a player in this market, let alone a leader. How on earth did they get an edge over Apple with all the cash, talent and other resources it has behind it?

You could always ask Tim Cook that question.. While at it.. Can you also asking why Apple desktops are so far behind compare to even the worst competintion...