Nvidia BB8 autonomous car drives 80km through Silicon Valley


If you live in California, see something green with lots of sensors and overtake it, chances are its an NVIDIA test platform for autonomous driving. The car in question is called .. BB8 yeah, geeks will be geeks. And it drove 80km all by itself.
At GTC Europe, Nvidia announced successful autonomous driving over a distance of 80 km in Silicon Valley, the accompanying did not intervene.BB8 is of course equipped with hardware from Nvidia e.g. Drive AGX Pegasus, and is controlled autonomously by the two Turing GPUs, and Xavier SoCs Silicon Valley for navigation. “This is not a demo, this is something you can get right now,” said NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang at GTC Europe Wednesday. In addition to the Drive AGX Pegasus hardware component, BB8 uses Drive AV / IX autonomous driving software.
In the dense traffic of the Bay Area, for example, the vehicle had to cope with other cars approaching the highway, whereupon BB8 initially reduces the speed and raises it back to its original level with a safe distance to the vehicle in front. If a sufficiently large space between vehicles is detected, BB8 also changes the lanes and tracks.
According to Nvidia, Drive AGX Pegasus is an energy-efficient solution the size of a laptop. It should be noted, however, that the platform uses a steep power consumption of 400 to 500 watts. Nvidia-based hardware and software are ready for use, however, the connected sensors are still mounted on the roof of the test vehicle.
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Senior Member
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In this case it is left driver

Don Vito Corleone
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Well it is a GeForce experience

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Just wait 'til they turn RTX on

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Wait till you see the hotfix driver.
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No reason to worry. If anything ever goes wrong...
=> Exciting Visual Effects
=> Adrenaline Experience to Die For
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OK I'm missing something. Why do we need cars that drive themselves? And would you get on a plane flown, and hopefully landed, only by a computer?
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I would not mind fully automated car where I just enter destination. Party all the way.
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500W and they call this energy efficient? As for "This is not a demo, this is something you can get right now" ok, so where can I get this? Why is this dubbed a test? Why is still obviously in development?
Look, Nvidia, this work you've done is cool and as far as I can tell, it's very well done. But don't up-sell it's capabilities and progress for more than it really is. Tell us facts, not your (Nvidia's) own personal opinions.
Uh... planes are mostly flown by a computer, or at the very least, capable of being flown by one. And for the most part, I would trust a computer to fly and land a plane over a human.
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500W and they call this energy efficient? As for "This is not a demo, this is something you can get right now" ok, so where can I get this? Why is this dubbed a test? Why is still obviously in development?
Look, Nvidia, this work you've done is cool and as far as I can tell, it's very well done. But don't up-sell it's capabilities and progress for more than it really is. Tell us facts, not your (Nvidia's) own personal opinions.
500w power envelope is energy efficient for an automated drive system.
Have you ever seen comparable ones, like tesla?
Much more power efficient than those considering capability.
Lastly, 500w is nothing.
Alternators in cars have so much overhead and it's simple enough to install a higher amperage alternator if need be.
150amp alternator x 14 volts is over 2kw.
That's practically free energy.
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Meh!
i live here (Silicon Valley) and the simple fact is Nvidia wanted a piece of the pie after their gpus were used by Google/Waymo/Uber cars.
who could blame them as this is a huge emerging market, especially for electric self driving cars.
and someone asked why?
there are several whys; Safety, denser traffic flow and ultimately, the end of auto maintenance by having electric self drivers cheaper than driving yourself (incl. insurance, fuel, wear and tear, oil changes, tires, etc...)
of course this is an urban model, but hey that's where the vast majority of people live in every country.
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500w power envelope is energy efficient for an automated drive system.
Have you ever seen comparable ones, like tesla?
Much more power efficient than those considering capability.
Lastly, 500w is nothing.
Alternators in cars have so much overhead and it's simple enough to install a higher amperage alternator if need be.
150amp alternator x 14 volts is over 2kw.
That's practically free energy.
A few things:
1. No, 500W really isn't efficient, especially if we're talking electric cars, where they already have a range issue.
2. Have you seen what Tesla uses? Because their system is based on the Drive PX2, a 125W system. That's perfectly acceptable, considering the autonomous driving capabilities of those cars.
3. Electric cars don't use alternators. But even if we're talking combustion engines, no, it's not free energy. In case you're not aware, the more power that is drawn from an electric generator (like an alternator) the more mechanical resistance it puts on the system. This resistance will decrease fuel economy.
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500w power envelope is energy efficient for an automated drive system.
Have you ever seen comparable ones, like tesla?
Much more power efficient than those considering capability.
Lastly, 500w is nothing.
Alternators in cars have so much overhead and it's simple enough to install a higher amperage alternator if need be.
150amp alternator x 14 volts is over 2kw.
That's practically free energy.
There is no such thing as free energy.
Take DC electric motor (call it alternator if you want), rotate it by mechanical source of energy. There is voltage induced due to coils traveling through static magnetic field. If you short circuit electrical power outputs, there will be equivalent breaking force applied to mechanical rotation input as is Voltage * current.
In other words: Alternator which has absolutely no load applies breaking force to mechanical source of energy equal to friction in it and rotating feromagnetic metal force resisting static magnetic field. Which is tiny force.
Byt every real watt drawn from alternator is breaking force applied to its mechanical source.
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just a point about reality...
whether or not a politician wants to use the words "climate change" or "global warming" doesn't matter.
what matters is the reality of actual water levels, storms, evaporation rates (esp. for the air forces) and the related temperature levels.
this is why the U.S. military has been dealing with climate change, while the current politicians in charge are nay-sayers. the national security of every nation is at risk literally.
and honestly, does anybody really think over 500 million extra cars that never existed before 2003 and hundreds of coal burning power stations that never existed before do not have an effect on a Closed System called planet earth?
and that's just the Chinese/ Indian cherry on top of our sins since 1918.
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oh yeah the point was that self driving electrified cars are the actual future
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Better have right driver for that speed