Volvo Cars is using AI-generated life-like virtual worlds to enhance the development of its safety software, such as driver assistance systems (ADAS), all with the aim of creating even safer cars.
We can now synthesise incident data collected by the advanced sensors in our new cars, such as emergency braking, sharp steering or manual intervention. This allows us to probe, reconstruct and explore them in new ways to better understand how incidents can be avoided.
This is possible thanks to an advanced computational technique called Gaussian splatting, which can create a vast amount of realistic, high fidelity 3D scenes and subjects from real world visuals. The virtual environment can for example be manipulated by adding or removing road users and changing the behaviour of traffic or obstacles on the road – to generate different outcomes.
Such a technique allows us to expose our safety software to all types of traffic situations, at a speed and scale not possible before. We now can develop software that works well also in complex, rare yet potentially dangerous ‘edge cases’ and reduce the time it takes to expose our software to edge cases, from months to days.
“We already have millions of data points of moments that never happened that we use to develop our software” says Alwin Bakkenes, Head of Global Software Engineering at Volvo Cars. “Thanks to Gaussian splatting we can select one of the rare corner cases and explode it into thousands of new variations of the scenario to train and validate our models against. This has the potential to unlock a scale that we’ve never had before and even to catch edge cases before they happen in the real world.”
One part of the puzzle
Volvo Cars uses virtual environments alongside real-world testing for software training, development and validation because they’re safe, scalable, and cost-efficient. The virtual environments are developed in-house in collaboration with Zenseact, an AI and software company founded by Volvo Cars.
This project is part of a PhD programme for leading Swedish universities to explore whether neural rendering techniques will be integrated into future safety initiatives. The study is sponsored by Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP).
A history of using data to improve safety
Volvo Cars has a long history of using data and advanced technologies to enhance safety. Data collected by the Volvo Cars Safety Research team has played a crucial role in the development and testing of some of the world’s most prominent safety features.
In the 1970’s, Volvo Cars started leveraging data to improve safety thanks to its Safety Research team. In the early days, the team arrived at the scene of accidents with measuring tapes, assessing skid marks and other crash indicators. The data and knowledge gathered from the accidents have inspired numerous lifesaving innovations, such as the Whiplash Injury Protection System and Side Impact Protection System. New advanced tech now allows us to be even smarter with how we use data to prevent risky situations.
Integration of NVIDIA technology
Volvo Cars can explore technologies like Gaussian splatting thanks to the recently expanded relationship with NVIDIA. The new generation of fully electric cars, built on NVIDIA accelerated compute collects data from various sensors to understand what’s happening in and around the car better than ever before. An AI supercomputing platform, powered by NVIDIA DGX systems, contextualises this data, unlocks new insights, and trains future safety models. It will improve and accelerate the development of artificial intelligence. This supercomputing platform is part of a recent investment of Volvo Cars and Zenseact to set up one of the largest data centers in the Nordics.
Want to know more?
The exploration of Gaussian splatting and generative AI forms part of Volvo Cars’ presentation at the NVIDIA GTC conference.
