Nvidia has launched a safety framework for driverless cars that combines training, simulation and deployment as GM signs up for its technology.
Halos spans platform, algorithmic and ecosystem safety. At the development level, it includes design-time, deployment-time and validation-time guardrails, combining its DGX supercomputer for AI training, Omniverse and Cosmos running on NVIDIA OVX for simulation, and NVIDIA DRIVE AGX chips and Drive OS for deployment.
This comes as General Motors has signed up to use the Nvidia technologies for training, simulation and AGX chips in vehicles.
“The time for autonomous vehicles has arrived and we will work with AI in manufacturing, enterprise and the way they simulate and design cars and in the car,” said Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia.
“We’ve been working on self driving cars for over a decade. It can be in the datacentre or the car, Waymo and Wayve use both. We build the training computer, the simulation computer and the robot computer. And GM will build their future self-driving car fleet.”
- Blackwell AI processor for driverless trucks
Halos is key to the safety requirements, he says.
“Safety requires technology from silicon to software, everything from diversity to monitoring and transparency, explainability, all of these philosophies have to be engrained in the silicon and software. That in every line of code, that’s 7m lines of code that is safety assessed,” he said.
- This has been certified on the AGX Orin chip rather the coming Drive Thor chip
Halos also includes the DriveOS software, a safety-certified operating system that extends from CPU to GPU; a safety-assessed base platform that delivers the foundational computer needed to enable safe systems for all types of applications; and DRIVE AGX Hyperion, a hardware platform that connects SoC, DriveOS and sensors in an electronic control unit architecture.
Halos includes libraries for safety data loading and accelerators, and application programming interfaces for safety data creation, curation and reconstruction to filter out, for example, undesirable behaviours and biases before training.
It also features training, simulation and validation environments using the Omniverse Blueprint for AV simulation with Cosmos world foundation models to train, test and validate drivelerss cars. The software stack combines modular components with end-to-end AI models to ensure safety with cutting-edge AI models in the loop.
The Nvidia AI Systems Inspection Lab, launched at CES in January, acts as the entry point for Halos which allows car makers and developers to verify the safe integration of their products with Nvidia technology. This is a worldwide program accredited by the ANSI National Accreditation Board for an inspection plan integrating functional safety, cybersecurity, AI safety and regulations into a unified safety framework.
Inaugural members of the AI Systems Inspection Lab include Ficosa, Omnivision, onsemi and Continental.
“With the launch of Halos, we’re empowering partners and developers to choose the state-of-the-art technology elements they need to build their own unique offerings, driving forward a shared mission to create safe and reliable autonomous vehicles,” said Riccardo Mariani, vice president of industry safety at Nvidia. “Halos complements existing safety practices and can potentially accelerate standardization and regulatory compliance.”
“Halos’ holistic approach to safety is particularly critical in a setting where companies want to harness the power of generative AI for increasingly capable AV systems developed end to end, which preclude traditional compositional design and verification,” said Marco Pavone, lead AV researcher at Nvidia.
“Being a member of the AI Systems Inspection Lab means working at the forefront of automotive systems innovation and integrity,” said Cristian Casorran Hontiyuelo, advanced driver-assistance system engineering and product manager at Ficosa.
“Cars are so much more than just transportation,” said Paul Wu, head of product marketing for automotive at OMNIVISION. “They’ve also become our entertainment and information hubs. Vehicles must continually evolve in their ability to keep us safe. We are pleased to join NVIDIA’s new AI Systems Safety Lab as a demonstration of our commitment to achieving the highest levels of safety in our product offerings.”
“We are delighted to be working with NVIDIA and included in the launch of the NVIDIA AI Systems Inspection Lab,” said Geoff Ballew, general manager of the automotive sensing division at onsemi. “This unique initiative will improve road safety in an innovative way. We look forward to the advancements it will bring.”
“We are pleased to participate in the newly launched NVIDIA Drive AI Systems Inspection Lab and to further intensify the fruitful, ongoing collaboration between our two companies,” said Nobert Hammerschmidt, head of components business at Continental.
Halos includes safety datasets with diverse, unbiased data, as well as safe deployment workflows, comprising triaging workflows and automated safety evaluations, along with a data flywheel for continual safety improvements.
Halos also dovetails with recent significant safety certifications and assessments of NVIDIA automotive products, including the DriveOS 6.0 operating system conforms with ISO 26262 automotive safety integrity level (ASIL D) standards and TÜV SÜD granting the ISO/SAE 21434 Cybersecurity Process certification to NVIDIA for its automotive SoC, platform and software engineering processes.
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