Optimus Ride to use Nvidia Drive platform for drive to full autonomy

Boston-based Optimus Ride, a leading self-driving vehicle technology company, today announced it is integrating the Nvidia Drive AGX Xavier computing platform into its autonomous vehicle fleet.

Capable of delivering 30 trillion operations per second utilising new deep learning and computer vision accelerators, the Nvidia Drive platform will deliver unprecedented computational performance and safety to Optimus Ride’s self-driving vehicles.

“Building on Nvidia Drive ensures our vehicles are equipped with the highest performance and most efficient processing power available,” said Optimus Ride CEO and co-founder Ryan Chin. “With the introduction of Nvidia Drive AGX Xavier, our vehicles will be able to adapt and respond to their environments faster than ever before, comprehending what’s happening around them in real time. With this level of insight and responsiveness, we’ll be able to introduce fully autonomous services in our deployment regions by the end of the year.”

With the Nvidia Drive AGX Xavier platform, Optimus Ride can build its first fully driverless (Level 4) fleet service for geofenced deployments, and scale vehicle intelligence to deploy globally in the AV marketplace

“Optimus Ride’s adoption of the scalable Nvidia Drive AGX platform gives them the computational horsepower and sophisticated AI software stack essential for safe self-driving systems,” says Rishi Dhall, vice president, automotive business development at NVIDIA. Nvidia is an investor in Optimus Ride and supports its goal of deploying self-driving vehicles in geofenced areas such as planned communities, campuses and self-driving zones in cities in order to solve the first-and last-mile problem. The Drive AGX Xavier platform will be used in all Optimus Ride vehicles currently deployed in both Boston’s Seaport District and the Union Point Smart City development in Weymouth, Massachusetts. The technology will also be incorporated into additional Optimus Ride vehicles at new sites to be announced later this year.

Optimus Ride develops self-driving vehicle algorithms, software, hardware, and system integration for Mobility on Demand (MoD) solutions. The company says its self-driving vehicles are ideal for industrial and office parks, campuses, mixed-use private developments and other geofenced areas. With roots at MIT, Optimus Ride has assembled a team of outstanding experts in self-driving technologies, MoD systems, urban design and smart cities.

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