Volvo Cars, automotive safety company Autoliv, and NVIDIA, an AI and visual computing company, announced Tuesday that they are teaming up to develop advanced systems and software for self-driving cars.
The three companies will work together with Zenuity, a newly-formed automotive software development joint venture equally owned by Volvo Cars and Autoliv, to develop what they called “next generation self-driving car technologies.”
As part of the collaboration Volvo Cars, Autoliv and Zenuity will use NVIDIA’s AI car computing platform as the foundation for their own advanced software development.
“This cooperation with NVIDIA places Volvo Cars, Autoliv and Zenuity at the forefront of the fast moving market to develop next generation autonomous driving capabilities and will speed up the development of Volvo’s own commercially available autonomous drive cars,” said Hakan Samuelsson, president and chief executive of Volvo Cars.
Volvo Cars, Autoliv, Zenuity and NVIDIA will work together to develop systems that can utilize deep learning — a form of artificial intelligence — to recognize objects in their environment, anticipate potential threats and navigate safely.
These systems can compare real-time situational awareness with a known high-definition map, enabling them to plan a safe route and drive precisely along it, adjusting to ever-changing circumstances, according to a statement by Volvo. They also perform other critical functions such as stitching camera inputs to create a complete surround-view of the car, said Volvo.
Zenuity will provide Volvo Cars with self-driving software. At the same time, Autoliv will also sell this software to third party OEMs using Autoliv’s established and broad sales, marketing and distribution network.