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Nvidia further distances itself from Uber in wake of fatal self-driving crash

Nvidia further distances itself from Uber in wake of fatal self-driving crash

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The chipmaker sought to clarify which elements of its technology are used by Uber’s autonomous vehicles

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Uber’s self-driving cars do not use Nvidia’s autonomous vehicle computing platform, Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang clarified on Wednesday. The computer graphics cards maker continues to distance itself from what is considered the first fatal accident involving a self-driving car.

“Uber develops their own sensing and driving technology,” Huang said during a Q&A session with the press at Nvidia’s annual GPU Technology Conference in San Jose. Uber does use Nvidia’s standard GPU, but it does not use the company’s self-driving vehicle platform. An Uber spokesperson confirmed that it only uses Nvidia’s standard GPUs.

“Uber develops their own sensing and driving technology.”

An Uber self-driving test vehicle struck a pedestrian on March 18th in Tempe, a suburb of Phoenix. The vehicle was in autonomous mode at the time of the collision, and a vehicle operator was behind the wheel. Uber immediately suspended its autonomous vehicle testing in Arizona, as well as in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Toronto.

The fatal Uber crash has thrust the ride-hailing company into the worst kind of spotlight. It has also affected the rest of the autonomous vehicle industry. Companies racing to develop autonomous vehicles — vocal advocates of a technology they say will reduce fatal car accidents — now face questions about public safety.

Within days of the crash, competitors such as Intel’s Mobileye publicly criticized Uber’s system, and former supporters and suppliers tried to limit the collateral damage. Arizona governor Doug Ducey, a pro-business politician and champion of autonomous vehicle technology, took the unusual step of suspending Uber’s testing in the state.

Velodyne, which supplies Uber with its LIDAR sensing technology, tried to preempt questions about its product. A Velodyne executive said its laser-based sensors were able to spot the pedestrian involved in the crash, suggesting that the flaw lay with Uber’s software.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Nvidia is no different. The company has touted the capabilities of its GPUs — and the self-driving platform architecture enabled by its core technology — as it evolves beyond its initial purpose to deliver faster and more realistic graphics for video games. This same technology happens to be ideally suited to handle the vast amounts of data needed to unlock the power of artificial intelligence. Thousands of companies now use the Nvidia GPU for their various artificial intelligence pursuits, including self-driving vehicles.

Nvidia’s aggressive pursuit of AI for use in self-driving vehicle technology has made it a darling among investors, but that attention has its own share of risks.

Nvidia said on Tuesday that it had stopped testing its autonomous vehicles on public roads, sending its stocks down more than 12 percent as investors interpreted the move as connected to the technology Uber used in its self-driving test vehicles.

Last January, Nvidia announced that it had been working with Uber on self-driving technology but provided few details on the nature of their collaboration. Huang’s comments this week have shed more light on that.

Questions about the Uber crash and Nvidia’s decision to suspend its autonomous vehicle testing on public roads came up repeatedly at the company’s GPU Technology Conference in San Jose this week.

“This is obviously an important moment.”

Huang pushed back against those questions, arguing that any company developing autonomous vehicle technology should have paused testing on public roads following the Uber crash. He also clarified that Nvidia halted testing on public roads within a day or two of the fatal Uber crash. Nvidia has five autonomous vehicles that it uses to test its Drive computing platform in New Jersey and California. The company uses vehicles to collect data in New Jersey, California, Japan, and Germany. It has continued to test on private tracks and use simulation.

“This is obviously an important moment,” Huang said, adding that the company has a lot of testing it can do on closed tracks and with its simulator. “You should pause to learn from it,” Huang continued. “There’s no question that everyone in the industry should pause.”

“As soon as the news became clear to us we stopped,” he said. “And the reason is that it’s good engineering practice. Whether you are using the highest level of engineering quality systems or the highest level of care, it doesn’t matter. If there’s an incident that happens and there’s a new piece of information you can learn from, then you pause to learn from it.”

He added, “I think that everybody in the industry should.”

Huang emphasized that every company currently using the Nvidia Drive platform is still using the product as they test and develop their autonomous vehicle programs.

Nvidia’s newest iteration of its Drive PX platform, which will deliver more than 10 times its predecessor’s processing power, was revealed last year. Pegasus will be marketed to the hundreds of automakers and tech companies that are currently developing self-driving cars starting the second half of 2018, the company says.