Daimler, Bosch and Nvidia are sending the first autonomous shuttles to California

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Mercedes-Benz is starting the revolution of the fully autonomous transportation. In 2019, Daimler, Bosch and Nvidia are sending the first fully-automated driverless cars into an California metropolis.

Setting the course in automated driving, the three giants will use Level 4 and Level 5 technology for the autonomous fleet that will hit the road next year.  In the second half of 2019, Bosch and Daimler will provide customers with a shuttle service based on automated vehicles on selected routes in a Californian metropolis. Tech giant Nvidia will be the supplier of the artificial intelligence platform.

The trio promises safe and mature innovations to the market, based on the expertise accumulated in developing cars and highly intelligent systems.

“The decisive factor is to introduce a safe, dependable and mature system,” says Dr Michael Hafner, Head of Automated Driving at Daimler AG. “Safety has the highest priority and is the constant theme of all aspects and development stages on our way to the start of series production. If in doubt, thoroughness comes before speed.”

A mobile super-computer will perform the analysis and interpretation of the incoming data and will convert them into driving commands. For top safety, the necessary computing operations are performed in parallel in different circuits, within a platform supplied by the US tech company Nvidia. The network of control units collates the data from all sensors with radar, video, lidar and ultrasound technology, evaluates them within milliseconds and plans the movements of the vehicle.

Daimler, Bosch and Nvidia will carry out their pilot project on the roads of California, but the city is yet to be decided. They will also offer customers an automated shuttle service on select routes in a city located in the San Francisco Bay in Silicon Valley.

The vehicle will come to the future occupant, not the other way around. There will be no need for the passenger to have a driver’s license, because the system requires no human intervention at all. Mercedes-Benz S-Class and V-Class will be the vehicles involved for the beginning.