GPU giant Nvidia used a lot of its CES 2023 ‘special’ address to talk about the cars of the future. Ones, it said, that don’t have pedals, can operate autonomously and can have updates pushed through without a care in the world. To help its vision along, Nvidia has expanded its partnership with Mercedes-Benz, allowing Merc to make its cars in the cloud.
“Over the past couple of years, we’ve shown how important the metaverse is in the development, testing and validation of autonomous vehicles. We’ve shown how our drive sim platform enables us to create digital twins of roads, intersections and highways, plus a massive array of scenarios to ensure that the AI car can safely navigate through complex environments,” Nvidia VP of automotive Danny Shapiro said.
Mercedes-Benz announced it’s taking the next step in digitising its production process, using the Nvidia Omniverse platform to design and plan manufacturing and assembly facilities for its upcoming fleets. While it doesn’t seem all that sexy, pulling the process from the real world into the online world has a lot of benefits.
Building a car requires thousands of parts (and workers) all moving in harmony. Using digital twins, Merc can instead use the omniverse environment, allowing it to reconfigure an assembly line, for example, in simulation, without interrupting current production.
Mercedes-Benz has already committed to developing the next generation of software-defined vehicles with Nvidia. Its upcoming fleets will be built on Nvidia Drive Orin centralised compute, with intelligent driving capabilities tested and validated in the Nvidia Drive Sim platform, which is built on Nvidia’s Omniverse.