NVIDIA Introduces DRIVE AV Safety Force Field: Computational Defensive Driving Policy to Shield Autonomous Vehicles from Coll...
March 18 2019 - 7:35PM
GPU Technology Conference—NVIDIA today bolstered
its NVIDIA DRIVE™ AV autonomous vehicle software suite with a
planning and control layer designed to enable a safe and
comfortable driving experience. A primary component of this
software is Safety Force Field™ (SFF™), a robust driving policy
that protects the vehicle, its occupants and other road users.
SFF analyzes and predicts the dynamics of the surrounding
environment by taking in sensor data and determining a set of
actions to protect the vehicle and other road users. The SFF
framework ensures these actions will never create, escalate or
contribute to an unsafe situation and includes actions necessary to
mitigate potential danger.
Backed by robust calculations, SFF makes it possible for
vehicles to achieve safety based on mathematical zero-collisions
verifications, rather than attempting to model the high complexity
of real-world scenarios via limited statistics. Running on the
NVIDIA DRIVE platform, frame-by-frame, physics-based SFF
computations are performed on vehicle sensor data.
SFF has also undergone validation using real-world data and
bit-accurate simulation, including scenarios involving highway and
urban driving that would be too dangerous to recreate in the real
world.
Mitigating Dangerous Situations and Eliminating
Collisions The National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration estimates that approximately 94 percent of crashes
are caused by human error. The industry is working toward zero
accidents with the development of autonomous vehicles. Augmenting
the DRIVE AV platform with safety features such as path planning,
prediction and SFF is a leap forward to achieving this goal.
Unique to SFF is its ability to take into account both braking
and steering constraints. This dual consideration helps eliminate
several problematic vehicle behavior anomalies that could arise if
they were separated. The policy follows one core principle of
collision avoidance as opposed to a large set of rules and
expectations.
“By removing human error from the driving equation, we can
prevent the vast majority of collisions and minimize the impact of
those that do occur,” said David Nister, vice president of
Autonomous Driving Software at NVIDIA. “SFF is mathematically
designed such that autonomous vehicles equipped with SFF will, like
magnets that repel each other, keep themselves out of harm’s way
and not contribute to unsafe situations.”
Open and Transparent SFF is an open platform
and can be combined with any driving software. As a safety-decision
making policy in the motion planning stack, SFF monitors and
prevents unsafe actions. It cleanly separates obstacle avoidance
from a long tail of complicated rules of the road. When running on
a high-performance compute platform like NVIDIA DRIVE, it adds
another layer of diversity and redundancy features to deliver the
highest levels of safety.
More details on Safety Force Field are available at
www.nvidia.com/sff.
About NVIDIA NVIDIA’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) invention
of the GPU in 1999 sparked the growth of the PC gaming market,
redefined modern computer graphics and revolutionized parallel
computing. More recently, GPU deep learning ignited modern AI — the
next era of computing — with the GPU acting as the brain of
computers, robots and self-driving cars that can perceive and
understand the world. More information at
http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/.
For further information, contact:Marie Labrie
PR Manager, Automotive NVIDIA Corporation +1-408-921-6987
mlabrie@nvidia.com
Certain statements in this press release including, but not
limited to, statements as to: the benefits, performance and
abilities of SFF and DRIVE; the ability of SFF to not create,
escalate or contribute to an unsafe situation, to mitigate
potential danger and to keep a vehicle from harm’s way; SFF making
it possible for vehicles to achieve safety based on mathematical
zero-collisions verifications and simulations; SFF being a critical
leap forward in the development of autonomous vehicles; if all
vehicles had SFF, no collisions occurring; SFF helping to prevent
the vast majority of collisions and minimize the impact of those
that do occur; SFF’s ability to mathematically prove that if all
vehicles use it, we can achieve absolute safety and eliminate
collisions; SFF being like a protection halo for autonomous vehicle
and an open platform that can be combined with any driving
software; the ability to see the software in action in the
simulation and the vehicle; how the SFF policy works, its abilities
and how its capabilities have been validated; the availability of
SFF; and automakers and suppliers ability to bring AI-powered Level
2+ automated driving capabilities and smart cockpit functionality
that far exceed Level 2 driver assistance solutions, to mainstream
vehicles starting in 2020 are forward-looking statements that are
subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be
materially different than expectations. Important factors that
could cause actual results to differ materially include: global
economic conditions; our reliance on third parties to manufacture,
assemble, package and test our products; the impact of
technological development and competition; development of new
products and technologies or enhancements to our existing product
and technologies; market acceptance of our products or our
partners' products; design, manufacturing or software defects;
changes in consumer preferences or demands; changes in industry
standards and interfaces; unexpected loss of performance of our
products or technologies when integrated into systems; as well as
other factors detailed from time to time in the most recent reports
NVIDIA files with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC,
including, but not limited to, its annual report on Form 10-K and
quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Copies of reports filed with the
SEC are posted on the company's website and are available from
NVIDIA without charge. These forward-looking statements are not
guarantees of future performance and speak only as of the date
hereof, and, except as required by law, NVIDIA disclaims any
obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect
future events or circumstances.
© 2019 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved. NVIDIA, the
NVIDIA logo, NVIDIA DRIVE, Safety Force Field, SFF and Xavier are
trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in
the U.S. and other countries. Other company and product names may
be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are
associated. Features, pricing, availability and specifications are
subject to change without notice.
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