A fully autonomous vehicle on the market by 2020: That’s the stated goal of Audi and Nvidia. The two companies formally announced their partnership at the 2017 CES technology show in Las Vegas, where the duo marked the occasion by bringing a self-driving Audi Q7 to the show.
Wrapped in splashy graphics and fitted with Nvidia’s Drive PX 2 artificial-intelligence platform, the autonomous Q7 Deep Learning concept relies on neural networks and deep learning to achieve an understanding of its surrounding environment?a dynamism missing in preprogrammed systems?by taking in information during driving sessions initially completed by a human user. Despite this achievement, both Audi and Nvidia acknowledge the current concept is merely a demonstration of what’s to come, as additional neural network platforms will need to be integrated to create an automated vehicle ready for use on public roads. That reality, paired with the fact that Nevada law requires that a human operator be seated behind the wheel of roadgoing autonomous vehicles, meant Audi and Nvidia fenced off an area of the parking lot outside the Las Vegas Convention Center to create a closed course for the self-driving Q7.
With an empty driver’s seat, a dashboard-mounted screen displaying a live feed from the automated Q7’s front-mounted camera, and a representative of the project in the front passenger seat to keep tabs on the vehicle, we sat in the crossover’s comfortable...