Toyota and Nvidia to expand partnership for autonomous car technology

Reports indicate that Toyota Motor Corp. is expanding its relationship with Nvidia, as the automaker and its research units based in Japan and the U.S. look to speed up its autonomous vehicle development program.

At the GPU Technology conference 2019, Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia announced that Toyota Research Institute –Advance development, which is the automaker’s Japan-based research firm, is using the Nvidia’s complete end to end production and development for building, validating and training its autonomous vehicle technology. The partnership is based on development between engineering teams from TRI-AD in Japan, Nvidia and Toyota Research Institute in U.S.

According to this new agreement, Toyota will utilize Nvidia’s platform to train deep neural networks, test, validate and for the final deployment for its cars. Nvidia’s freshly delivered AV simulator Drive Constellation is being used by Toyota and is now available to the customers as well.

Toyota reportedly becomes the very first customer to use Constellation, which is a cloud-based platform that allows autonomous vehicle developers to examine their technology in the virtual world. In a nutshell, Toyota will utilize Nvidia’s technology to develop autonomous vehicle throughout their process.

Toyota is planning to establish completely autonomous cars that would help disable and elderly people, under its Chauffeur system. The automaker is also working on “Guardian” a production vehicles system that will run in the background and step in when required. The work of Guardian would be to sense, watch and analyze problems.

TRI-AD CEO James Kuffner has announced that their vision is to empower self-driving vehicles with the objective to lessen deaths, provide mobility for all and enable easier transportation.

After 2015, when Nvidia unveiled its innovative architecture for autonomous vehicle, a supercomputer known as Drive PX, it has locked in automotive partnerships with many carmakers including Toyota. 

The primary aim of designing the original platform was to process the data which is coming from the vehicle’s cameras, sensors and then efficiently use AI algorithm-powered operating system, high-definition 3D map to aid in comprehending a car’s surroundings, know its whereabouts, and predict potential dangers while driving.