To move the automotive industry forward, NVIDIA and Mercedes-Benz are choosing the virtual path.
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang joins Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Kellenius on the automaker stage strategy update event in Silicon Valley yesterday, showing off the progress on his landmark partnership to digitize the entire product lifecycle as well as the ownership and automated driving experience.
The automotive industry is undergoing a massive transformation driven by advances in accelerated computing, artificial intelligence and the industrial metaverse.
“Digitalization is optimizing every aspect of the automotive life cycle, from styling and design, software development and engineering, manufacturing, modeling and safety testing to the customer’s purchase and driving experience,” Huang said.
Since its inception, Mercedes-Benz has set the bar for automotive innovation and ingenuity backed by exquisite craftsmanship. The automaker is shaping the future with its intelligent and software-defined cars powered by end-to-end NVIDIA solutions.
Fleet of the future
The next generation of Mercedes-Benz cars will be built on a revolutionary centralized computing architecture that includes sophisticated software and functions that will transform these cars of the future into high-performance supercomputers on wheels that are continuously updated.
During the event, the automaker unveiled its new MB.OS operating system, a custom-designed chip-to-cloud architecture that will be standard across the entire vehicle portfolio, providing exceptional software capabilities and ease of use.
MB.OS benefits from full access to all domains of the vehicle, including infotainment, automated driving, body and comfort, driving and charging – an approach that gives Mercedes-Benz customers a differentiated, superior product experience.
“MB.OS is a platform that unites all parts of our business,” said Kellenius during the event.
Security has never been so powerful
This architecture is based on NVIDIA DRIVE Orinwhich provides high-performance, energy-efficient AI computing to support a comprehensive array of sensors and software to safely enable advanced assisted driving and ultimately level 3 conditionally automated driving.
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Powered by DRIVE Orin is a flexible and scalable software stack developed jointly by NVIDIA and Mercedes-Benz. Sarah Tariq, NVIDIA’s vice president of autonomous driving software, joins Magnus Ostberghead of software at Mercedes-Benz, on stage to delve deeper into this complete software architecture, which includes MB.OS, middleware and deep neural networks to enable enhanced autonomy.
Tariq said: “The companies are working closely together to develop a software package that can comfortably and safely handle all the complexities that the automaker’s customers may face in their daily journeys around the world.”
This includes enhanced Level 2 features in urban environments where there are pedestrians or heavy, complex traffic. Using advanced artificial intelligence, Mercedes-Benz can deliver the comfortable driving experience consumers have come to expect, backed by uncompromising safety.
With the ability to perform 254 trillion operations per second, DRIVE Orin has enough computing power to continuously improve this software with new features and subscription services throughout the life of the vehicle, via software updates over the air, via the app, the web or from the cabin car
In addition, Mercedes-Benz accelerates the development of these systems with the high-performance NVIDIA DRIVE Sim platform built on NVIDIA Omniverse. This cloud-based platform provides physical scale simulation for automakers to develop and test autonomous vehicle systems in a wide range of rare and dangerous scenarios.
Production in the industrial metauniverse
This software-defined platform is just one part of Mercedes-Benz’s intelligent car strategy.
At CES last month Mercedes-Benz envisioned its first step in digitizing its manufacturing process by using NVIDIA Omniverse—a platform for creating and managing metauniverse applications—to plan and manage its manufacturing and assembly facilities.
With Omniverse, Mercedes-Benz can create an AI-enabled device digital double factories to review and optimize floor layouts, unlocking operational efficiencies. With advanced predictive analytics, software, and process automation, a digital double can maximize productivity and keep operations running smoothly.
By adopting a digital approach to its operations, Mercedes-Benz can also ensure that production activities will not be interrupted with the introduction of new models and architectures. And this plan can be applied to other regions of the automaker’s global production network for scalable, more flexible car production.
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Revolutionizing the customer experience
Digitization is also enhancing the car buying experience, moving from physical retail showrooms to immersive digital online spaces.
With Omniverse, automakers can bridge the gap between the digital and physical worlds by making online car exploration more realistic and interactive. These tools include online car configurators, 3D vehicle visualization, augmented reality car demos and virtual test drives.
Ostberg summed up: “The partnership with NVIDIA is already delivering on its promise, and the potential is huge.”