NVIDIA introduces cloud-based system for testing autonomous vehicles

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During the opening keynote of the GPU Technology Conference, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang announced NVIDIA DRIVE Constellation, which is a computing platform based on two different servers.

The first server runs NVIDIA DRIVE Sim software to simulate a self-driving vehicle’s sensors, such as cameras, lidar and radar, while the second server contains an NVIDIA DRIVE Pegasus AI car computer that runs the “complete autonomous vehicle software stack and processes the simulated data as if it were coming from the sensors of a car driving on the road.”

NVIDIA says that the cloud-based system for testing autonomous vehicles using “photorealistic simulation” is a “safer, more scalable method” for bringing self-driving cars to the roads.

“Deploying production self-driving cars requires a solution for testing and validating on billions of driving miles to achieve the safety and reliability needed for customers,” explains Rob Csongor, vice president and general manager of Automotive at NVIDIA.

“With DRIVE Constellation, we’ve accomplished that by combining our expertise in visual computing and datacenters. With virtual simulation, we can increase the robustness of our algorithms by testing on billions of miles of custom scenarios and rare corner cases, all in a fraction of the time and cost it would take to do so on physical roads.”

NVIDIA GPUs power the simulation server. Each generates a stream of simulated sensor data, which feed into the DRIVE Pegasus for processing.

Driving commands from DRIVE Pegasus are fed back to the simulator, which completes the digital feedback loop. Occurring 30 times a second, this “hardware-in-the-loop” cycle is used to validate that algorithms and software running on Pegasus are operating the simulated vehicle correctly.

Photoreal data streams are generated by DRIVE Sim software, creating a wide range of different testing environments. It can simulate different weather, such as rainstorms and snowstorms; blinding glare at different times of the day, or limited vision at night; and different types of road surfaces and terrain.

To test the autonomous car’s ability to react, dangerous situations can be scripted in simulation. This method of testing keeps humans out of harm's way. 

“Autonomous vehicles need to be developed with a system that covers training to testing to driving,” says Luca De Ambroggi, research and analyst director at IHS Markit.

“NVIDIA’s end-to-end platform is the right approach. DRIVE Constellation for virtually testing and validating will bring us a step closer to the production of self-driving cars.”

NVIDIA says that DRIVE Constellation will be available to early access partners in the third quarter of this year.