VW and Nvidia share their vision for how AI and deep learning will shape future vehicle development

Amid the many product reveals and debuts at CES 2018, Volkswagen and Nvidia have shared their vision for how AI and deep learning will shape the development of future vehicles.

VW CEO Dr Herbert Diess and Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang have discussed how AI is transforming the auto industry and highlighted the new I.D. Buzz – the refreshed Volkswagen MicroBus – reimagined in electric car form and infused with AI technology for the cockpit and self-driving.


“Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the car. Autonomous driving, zero-emissions mobility and digital networking are virtually impossible without advances in AI and deep learning. Combining the imagination of Volkswagen with Nvidia, the leader in AI technology, enables us to take a big step into the future,” Diess said.

“In just a few years, every new vehicle should have AI assistants for voice, gesture and facial recognition as well as augmented reality,” noted Huang. “Working with Volkswagen, we are creating a new generation of cars that are safer, more enjoyable to ride in than anything that has come before, and accessible to everyone.”

One potential outcome of AI infusion into Volkswagen I.D. Buzz could be intelligent co-Pilot capabilities, which will include convenience and assistance systems based on processing sensor data from both inside and outside of the car. The systems can be enhanced throughout the life of the vehicle via software updates, and can gain new capabilities as further developments are made in autonomous driving.

Building on the Nvidia Drive IX Intelligent Experience platform, AI-enabled features such as facial recognition for unlocking the vehicle from the outside, driver alerts for bicycles, gesture recognition for user controls, natural language understanding for flawless voice control, and gaze tracking for driver distraction alerts are all possible.

VW has also announced its collaboration with Aurora to bring self-driving electric vehicles to cities as Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) fleets.

Over the past six months, specialists from the Volkswagen Group and Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab at Stanford University have been working intensively with experts from Aurora to integrate Aurora’s self-driving system including sensors, hardware and software, such as machine learning and AI technology into VW vehicle platforms.

As the self-driving system reaches the required maturity and safety levels in the first cities, it can be integrated across the group brands, for different product categories from fully self-driving pods like SEDRIC, shuttles or delivery vans to self-driving trucks without a cabin.