Pony.Ai’s Nvidia-powered self-driving tech ready for mass production

Chinese autonomous technology company pony.ai has confirmed that its new Autonomous Drive Controller (ADC), powered by Nvidia The Drive Orin system-on-chip (SoC) is ready for mass production later this year.

The company – which has offices in Guangzhou, Beijing and Fremont, Calif. – has been testing ADC since the start of the year on highways and urban roads in China, optimizing it to operate at low latency. and with real-time performance.

And it says some customers have already been allowed to test the new software.

The latest ADC offers single or dual Nvidia Drive Orin configurations, delivering 254 and 508 trillion operations per second (TOPS) respectively. This makes it the highest performing automotive-grade SoC in the world, and it is designed to handle a large number of applications and deep neural networks simultaneously.

When combined with hardware including a forward-facing camera, millimeter wave radar, and long-range Lidar, ADC allows vehicles to safely perform multiple maneuvers including traffic following and merging during traffic jams, automatic lane change to follow navigation and overtaking.

The Level 4 The technology is also said to be able to safely manage U-turns, identify traffic lights, negotiate construction zones and accidents, identify and interact with vulnerable road users, as well as dealing with mergers on and off the suspenders. Its range of abilities was revealed in a test video posted by Pony.ai.

Additionally, using multiple configurations with one or more Drive Orin processors and Nvidia Ampere architecture GPUs, Pony.ai claims to have created an ADC product line that can be scalably deployed on self-driving trucks and robotaxis, accelerating so the company. vision of a robust mass production platform for autonomous vehicles (AV).

“By co-developing a turnkey computing platform with Nvidia, Pony.ai gained a deep understanding of the features and benefits of Nvidia Drive to rapidly accelerate our time to market,” said the co-founder. and CEO James Peng. “Pony’s ADC’s impressive real-time performance enables a wide range of applications and deployments.”

Among the first vehicles to be equipped with the latest technologies will be the Toyota Sienna Autono-Maas (S-AM), a seven-seater car that will be deployed as part of Pony.ai’s robotaxi operations in the first half of 2023.

Earlier this year, Pony.ai became the first self-driving company in China to receive a taxi license, enabling the company to start charge for trips in its self-driving taxis in Guangzhou.

The company has also obtained a permit that allows it to operate its robotaxis in Beijing. without security operator in the driver’s seat.