Self-Driving Pioneers to Take Stage at GTC China

From San Francisco to Shanghai, autonomous vehicles are attracting some of the brightest AI experts in the world. Several will report on their latest work during the upcoming GPU Technology Conference in Beijing, September 25-27.

GTC attendees will learn about HD mapping and localization from Lang Xianpeng, chief technical architect at Baidu, one of the world’s largest internet companies. He’ll discuss Baidu’s Project Apollo — an open source platform for self-driving that includes hardware, software and cloud data services for autonomous vehicles.

Project Apollo is adding partners from throughout the automotive ecosystem to speed adoption of self-driving solutions. Among them is NVIDIA, whose technology will be used from the data center to the car, including Tesla GPU accelerators and NVIDIA DRIVE PX, along with software such as CUDA and TensorRT. Xianpeng will highlight the role of GPUs in his team’s work.

Startups in the Spotlight

In addition to Baidu, attendees at GTC China will hear from local startups. Autonomous driving experts from Momenta, Pony.ai, AutoX and TuSimple will discuss the role of GPUs and AI in their self-driving solutions.

Momenta CEO Xudong Cao will outline how his company uses GPU-enabled deep learning to make sense of massive amounts of data. His team trains and tests its self-driving AI technology by crowdsourcing millions of miles of diverse driving data. This approach requires powerful GPUs tailored to AI tasks.

AutoX is creating a camera-first AI software solution for autonomous driving. This affordable technique aims to democratize self-driving technology. Jianxiong Xiao, founder and CEO, will discuss the role of GPUs in their process, and explain how AutoX aims to make autonomy universally accessible.

Pony.ai’s goal is to create the best possible AI solutions for Level 4 autonomy. Tiancheng Lou, founder and CTO, will explain the role GPUs play in their prediction and perception technology, and how they expect GPUs to factor into their future platform. The talk will also highlight recent real-world driving tests, with a focus on challenging scenarios and corresponding solutions.

TuSimple develops technology for autonomous long-distance freight delivery. In June, the company successfully completed a 200-mile Level 4 test drive from California to Arizona, using NVIDIA GPUs to process and understand the data from an array of cameras. Jianan Hao, co-founder and COO, will discuss the role GPUs play in the company’s autonomous trucking solution.

GTC China attendees will also hear from NVIDIA’s Peng Jia about the NVIDIA DRIVE platform. The talk will include details about the DRIVE PX AI car computer and the NVIDIA DriveWorks software developer kit.

To learn more about the role of GPUs in autonomous driving and how AI is transforming virtually every industry, join us in Beijing for GTC China 2017.

Photos courtesy of Baidu, AutoX and TuSimple.