Using AI to create safer cars

The company can now synthesise incident data collected by the advanced sensors in new cars, such as emergency braking, sharp steering or manual intervention. This allows Volvo Cars to probe, reconstruct and explore in new ways to better understand how incidents can be avoided.

This is possible thanks to an advanced computational technique called Gaussian splatting, which can create a vast amount of realistic, high-fidelity 3D scenes and subjects from real-world visuals. The virtual environment can, for example, be manipulated by adding or removing road users and changing the behaviour of traffic or obstacles on the road to generate different outcomes.

Such a technique allows Volvo to expose its safety software to all types of traffic situations, at a speed and scale not possible before. The company can now develop software that also works well in complex, rare yet potentially dangerous ‘edge cases’, and reduce the time it takes to expose our software to edge cases from months to days.

“We already have millions of data points of moments that never happened that we use to develop our software,” says Alwin Bakkenes, head of global software engineering at Volvo Cars. “Thanks to Gaussian splatting, we can select one of the rare edge cases and explode it into thousands of new variations of the scenario to train and validate our models against. This has the potential to unlock a scale that we’ve never had before and even to catch edge cases before they happen in the real world.”

One part of the puzzle

Volvo Cars uses virtual environments alongside real-world testing for software training, development and validation because they’re safe, scalable and cost-efficient. The virtual environments are developed in-house in collaboration with Zenseact, an AI and software company founded by Volvo Cars.

This project is part of a PhD programme for leading Swedish universities to explore whether neural rendering techniques will be integrated into future safety initiatives. The study is sponsored by Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP).

A history of using data to improve safety  

Volvo Cars has a long history of using data and advanced technologies to enhance safety. Data collected by the Volvo Cars Safety Research Team has played a crucial role in the development and testing of some of the world’s most prominent safety features.

In the 1970s, Volvo Cars started leveraging data to improve safety thanks to its Safety Research Team. In the early days, the team arrived at the scene of accidents with measuring tapes, assessing skid marks and other crash indicators. The data and knowledge gathered from the accidents have inspired numerous life-saving innovations, such as the Whiplash Injury Protection System and Side Impact Protection System. New advanced technology now allows us to be even smarter with how we use data to prevent risky situations.

Integration of NVIDIA technology

Volvo Cars can explore technologies such as Gaussian splatting thanks to the recently expanded relationship with NVIDIA. The new generation of fully electric cars, built on NVIDIA accelerated compute, collect data from various sensors to understand what’s happening in and around the car better than ever before. An AI supercomputing platform, powered by NVIDIA DGX systems, contextualises this data, unlocks new insights and trains future safety models. It will improve and accelerate the development of artificial intelligence. This supercomputing platform is part of a recent investment of Volvo Cars and Zenseact to set up one of the largest data centres in the Nordics.

The exploration of Gaussian splatting and generative AI forms part of Volvo Cars’ presentation at the NVIDIA GTC conference. The presentation is accessible live or on demand here.