Volvo Group and NVIDIA are delivering autonomy using Artificial intelligence.
At its headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden, Volvo announced Tuesday that it’s using the NVIDIA DRIVE end-to-end autonomous driving platform to train, test and deploy self-driving AI vehicles, targeting public transport, freight transport, refuse and recycling collection, construction, mining, forestry and more.
By injecting AI into these industries, Volvo Group and NVIDIA can create amazing new vehicles and deliver more productive services.
The two companies are co-locating engineering teams in Gothenburg and Silicon Valley. Together, they will build on the DRIVE AGX Pegasus platform for in-vehicle AI computing and utilize the full DRIVE AV software stack for 360-degree sensor processing, perception, map localization and path planning. They will also test and validate these systems using the NVIDIA DRIVE hardware-in-the-loop simulation platform.
“Our customers are demanding this from us now,” said Volvo Group CEO Martin Lundstedt. “Partnership is the new leadership, and a very long lasting relationship with NVIDIA has been signed today.
“Everything that moves will have automation or partial automation, so this technology is foundational,” said NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang. “Together, we’re going to change the future.”
The demands of today’s online shopping are putting even greater stress on the world’s transport systems. Expectations for overnight or same-day deliveries create challenges that can be addressed by autonomous trucks.
Already, more than 35 million packages worldwide are delivered each day, which is growing up to 28% percent annually. By 2040, delivery services will have to travel another 78 billion miles each year to handle goods ordered online, according to consultancy firm KPMG.
Autonomous trucks are arriving just in time to meet this demand. They can operate 24 hours a day, improving delivery times, and with increased efficiency, can bring down the annual cost of logistics in the U.S. by 45% — between $85 billion and $125 billion, according to experts at McKinsey.
From automating short, routine trips like the loading and unloading of containers on cargo ships and managing port operations, to autonomously driving on the highway, Volvo’s new generation of vehicles can dramatically streamline the shipping industry.
And before those vehicles reach the road, Volvo Group will be utilizing NVIDIA DRIVE Constellation to test and validate AVs, ensuring they can handle diverse operating challenges all over the world.
By leveraging hardware-in-the-loop simulation, the companies can test the autonomous driving systems on the same hardware and software that will run in the vehicle, at a significantly greater scale.
