General Motors Collaborates with NVIDIA for Next-Gen Vehicles

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang announced a collaboration with General Motors (GM) during his keynote speech on Tuesday at the NVIDIA GTC conference in San Jose. The partnership aims to use AI for next-generation vehicle experience and manufacturing.

GM will leverage NVIDIA’s accelerated computing platforms, including NVIDIA Omniverse with NVIDIA Cosmos, to optimise factory planning and robotics. 

Additionally, GM will use NVIDIA DRIVE AGX for in-vehicle systems to support advanced driver-assistance systems and enhanced safety features. This system will be capable of performing up to 1,000 trillion operations per second, facilitating the development of safe AVs at scale. 

The collaboration extends GM’s existing use of NVIDIA’s GPU platforms for AI model training across various operations. 

Mary Barra, chair and CEO at GM, noted, “AI not only optimises manufacturing processes and accelerates virtual testing but also helps us build smarter vehicles while empowering our workforce to focus on craftsmanship.” 

The partnership aims to create digital twins of assembly lines using NVIDIA Omniverse, allowing for virtual testing and production simulations to minimise downtime. GM will also train robotics platforms for material handling and precision welding to enhance manufacturing safety and efficiency. 

“The era of physical AI is here, and with GM, we’re transforming transportation, from vehicles to the factories where they’re made,” Huang said.

Also, a Safety System for AVs

In addition to this announcement, Huang also mentioned the importance of safety in Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) and launched NVIDIA Halos, a comprehensive safety system for AVs. 

Halos integrates NVIDIA’s automotive hardware and software safety solutions with AI research to ensure safe AV development from cloud to car. 

Halos operates on three levels: technology, development, and computation. The technology level includes platform, algorithmic, and ecosystem safety. The development level incorporates guardrails for design time, deployment time, and validation time.

Key elements of Halos focus on platform, algorithmic, and ecosystem safety. Halos complements existing safety practices and can potentially accelerate standardisation and regulatory compliance.