BMW, Intel and Mobileye have announced that approximately 40 autonomous test vehicles will be released on roads by the second half of 2017.
At CES 2017, the three companies revealed that the fleet of BMW 7 series cars will include advanced Intel and Mobileye technologies in global trials starting in the US and Europe.
The partnership will see BMW take responsibility for all driving control and dynamics, evaluation of overall functional safety, overall component integration, production of prototypes and scaling the platform via deployment partners.
Intel will provide the computing elements, from vehicle to data centre, while the company’s newly launched GO solution will also be integrated in the cars. Intel GO will provide a scalable development and compute platform for critical functions within the car, including sensor fusion, driving policy, environment modelling, path planning and decision.
Intel will provide the AI, deep learning and simulation infrastructure required for autonomous cars with a broad range of technologies in the data centre. These include Intel’s Arria 10 FPGAs, Intel Solid State Drives and Nervana platform.
Mobileye, meanwhile, will contribute its EyeQ5 computer vision processor. The processor identifies processes and interprets input from 360-degree surround view vision sensors and localisation.
Mobileye will continually work with BMW to develop the sensor fusion solution, creating a full model of the environment surrounding the vehicle, using input from vision, radar and lidar sensors.
All offerings from the included companies scale from individual integrated modules to a complete end-to-end solution providing a range of consumer experiences.
Klaus Fröhlich, Member of the Board of Management of BMW AG for Development said: “This year our fleet of vehicles will already test this joint technology globally under real traffic conditions. This is a significant step towards the introduction of the BMW iNEXT in 2021, which will be the BMW Group’s first fully autonomous vehicle.”
BMW’s iNEXT model will become the foundation for the company’s autonomous driving strategy, which will follow through with a range of automated models.
