Nvidia, the world’s leading microchip company, will supply artificial intelligence components and software to the Japanese automaker Toyota, which will use them in its production plants, traffic management systems, and also in its smart city prototype.
NVIDIA WANTS TO BRING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO FACTORIES
For Nvidia, the collaboration with Toyota – which dates back to 2017 – is part of the plan to spread the use of artificial intelligence across various sectors of the so-called “real economy,” in order to secure new sources of revenue beyond data centers: for this reason, the company is focusing on telecommunication networks, for example, although it believes the next big market for artificial intelligence is – precisely – the automotive sector. After first dominating the graphics card market for video games and then processors, Nvidia now aims to conquer the sector of technologies for autonomous driving.
In reality, the collaboration with Toyota goes beyond cars and concerns the spread of robotics in factories and the development of smart cities, the “intelligent cities” that leverage new communication, mobility, and energy management technologies to improve the quality of life for their inhabitants.
WOVEN CITY, TOYOTA’S “CITY OF THE FUTURE”
Toyota, in fact, will use Nvidia’s artificial intelligence technologies within Woven City, a smart city prototype developed by the company on the site of a former plant in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. Toyota describes Woven City as a “living laboratory of the future,” “sustainable” in energy generation and building design, which “will host full-time residents and researchers who will have the opportunity to test and develop solutions for autonomy, robotics, personal mobility, home automation, and artificial intelligence.”
The initial population of Woven City will be two thousand people. Toyota then plans to extend participation in the program not only to its employees, “but also retired couples, dealers, visiting scientists, and other collaborators.”
TOYOTA’S OTHER PLANS WITH NVIDIA
In addition to mobility and urban planning, Toyota will use Nvidia’s technologies – such as the Omniverse software platform – to create “digital twins” of its vehicle assembly lines, that is, virtual replicas of the assembly lines that will allow it to simulate process changes before making concrete modifications in the factory and interrupting production.
Furthermore, it will leverage the Isaac platform for robot training, to be used in the factory, and the Nemotron artificial intelligence models to accelerate automotive software development by automating some programming steps.
