Things in the Auto Tech world are about to go to the next level as Mercedes-Benz and NVidia have announced a collaboration that will see the two giants working on building a Software-Defined Computing architecture for Automated driving in Future fleets.
The new software-defined architecture will be built on the NVIDIA DRIVE platform and will see the introduction of AI and in-vehicle computing for what will be the start of a whole new era in the Automotive industry. According to the announcement, the new architecture will be a standard in Mercedes-Benz’ next-generation fleet, enabling state-of-the-art automated driving functionalities. A primary feature will be the ability to automate the driving of regular routes from address to address. In addition, there will be numerous future safety and convenience applications. Customers will be able to purchase and add capabilities, software applications, and subscription services through over-the-air software updates during the life of the car.
“We are excited to work with Mercedes-Benz. It’s the perfect partner for us given its long record of innovation and our strong technical relationship. It’s clear from our extensive discussions with Ola and his team, that we share a common vision of the automobile of the future. Together, we’re going to revolutionize the car ownership experience, making the vehicle software programmable and continuously upgradeable via over the air updates. Every future Mercedes-Benz with the NVIDIA DRIVE system will come with a team of expert AI and software engineers continuously developing, refining, and enhancing the car over its lifetime.” said Jensen Huang, founder, and CEO of NVIDIA.
Talking a little bit more about the architecture, the computer system-on-chip (SoC), called Orin, is based on the recently announced NVIDIA Ampere supercomputing architecture. The NVIDIA DRIVE platform includes a full system software stack designed for automated driving AI applications. NVIDIA and Mercedes-Benz will jointly develop the AI and automated vehicle applications that include SAE Level 2 and 3 levels, as well as automated parking functions (up to Level 4).
With a slew of new features and functionalities also part of the package, it will be very interesting to see how the collaboration pans out and what this collaboration yields in the coming months.
