NVIDIA's DRIVE Constellation Virtual Proving Grounds Launch

Testing of autonomous autos is critical since there will be no human behind the wheel. These vehicles have to recognize all manner of obstacles and conditions to operate safely. Testing of autonomous vehicles is done on public roads in some states, but much of the testing is done in the virtual world.

NVIDIA has announced that its DRIVE Constellation autonomous vehicle simulation platform is available. This is a virtual platform for testing fleets of virtual autonomous cars. The virtual world can simulate everything from routine driving to rare and dangerous situations.

The DRIVE Constellation Simulator uses NVIDIA GPUs running DRIVE Sim software to generate sensor output from a virtual car driving in a virtual world. The DRIVE Constellation Vehicle is operated by a Drive AGX Pegasus AI car computer.

NVIDIA has also announced a collaboration with the Toyota Research Institute-Advanced Development Partner to create safer autonomous transportation. The partnership will see the two firms working on developing, training, and validating self-driving vehicles.

The partnership includes advancements in AI computing infrastructure using NVIDIA GPUs, simulation using the DRIVE Constellation platform, and in-car AV computers based on Drive AGX and Drive AGX Pegasus.