Audi and Nvidia team up to produce AI-powered cars

Audi is to work with Nvidia to create autonomous vehicles, it was announced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Scott Keogh, Audi USA president, told the tech conference that autonomous cars powered by the Nvidia supercomputers would be on the market by 2020.

"There's no amount of programming in the world that will manage the street environments daily," he said, claiming the only practical way driverless vehicles would be able to travel public roads was through the use of artificial intelligence [AI].

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Audi also demonstrated the partnership's efforts using an AI-powered Q7 SUV, which autonomously navigated a small course. Programming a regular self-driving system would take "months upon months", said Keogh, who claimed the Q7's system was able to learn the course and adapt to different road surfaces in just four days.

Nvidia's supercomputer, Xavier, will "support full voice recognition and be able to lip-read", CarBuyer reports. It will also feature facial recognition, which can monitor the driver's expression and "ensure you pay attention to your surrounds".

Toyota has also revealed its AI-powered Concept-I at CES, only its onboard computer is primarily used to build a relationship with the driver for a more personal experience.

Like the Q7, the Concept-I can draw the driver's focus to the road and implement autonomous safety systems to prevent crashes.

Nvidia has also been working with Elon Musk's electric vehicle firm Tesla to develop its Autopilot driverless systems, with the first batch of updates released last month. The company will roll out further autonomous features on a monthly basis.