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Watch BB8, Nvidia’s self-driving car, navigate the world

Watch BB8, Nvidia’s self-driving car, navigate the world

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This is BB8. It’s Nvidia’s autonomous car and it’s been driving around in California and New Jersey testing things out. It’s always nice when companies give their cars cutesy names (this one is, of course, borrowed from The Force Awakens) but between the upbeat music and the eager way the car explores the world with brightly colored boxes identifying other cars, traffic lights, and road signs, you can’t help but smile. Sure, we’ve seen similar videos before, but the fact that cars are freaking driving themselves is still mind blowing.

Nvidia is all-in on autonomous cars. Its supercomputer for self-driving cars is being used by everyone from Volvo to Roborace, and the company just inked deals with huge suppliers ZF and Bosch, and German automotive giant Audi, to help build more autonomous vehicles. For many situations, it’s clear that the autonomous technology is (nearly) ready — the tech is progressing so fast that it seems like we’re just waiting for government regulators to figure out how to make it all legal.