Ansys has integrated its AVxcelerate Sensors into NVIDIA DRIVE Sim, a scenario-based AV simulator, which is powered by NVIDIA Omniverse. This collaboration offers users access to high-fidelity sensor simulation outputs, essential for training and validating perception systems in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and AVs.
The challenge of ensuring AV safety and reliability requires extensive testing and validation. Traditional physical testing methods are limited by the sheer scale of this challenge. Simulation offers a viable alternative, enabling the testing and validation of AV sensor and software performance in a virtual environment.
By combining Ansys AVxcelerate Sensors with NVIDIA DRIVE Sim, the partnership aims to bridge the gap between simulation and real-world scenarios. Ansys contributes its physics solvers for camera, lidar, radar, and thermal camera sensors to NVIDIA DRIVE Sim’s scenario generation capabilities. This integration allows users of NVIDIA DRIVE Sim with an AVxcelerate Sensors license to develop, train, test, and validate AV perception systems more effectively.
The partnership emphasizes the importance of high-performance computing in AV development. NVIDIA’s GPU capabilities and AI technology play a critical role in enabling rapid prototyping and efficient algorithm refinement for AVs.
NVIDIA Omniverse’s support for OpenUSD and its flexibility in 3D workflow development is a key aspect of this collaboration. It allows developers to build scalable simulations and acts as a data factory for AI model training. The integration of Ansys AVxcelerate Sensors, through application programming interfaces (APIs), facilitates seamless incorporation of Ansys physics solvers into NVIDIA’s 3D virtual world.
Walt Hearn, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Customer Excellence at Ansys, commented on the significance of this collaboration. He highlighted the importance of perception in AV systems and the need for real-world data validation for AI decision-making. The combination of Ansys AVxcelerate Sensors with NVIDIA DRIVE Sim, powered by Omniverse, offers a comprehensive environment for developers to test and validate environmental interactions, advancing the development of AV technology.
