BMW Group has selected the new NVIDIA Isaac robotics platform to enhance its automotive factories — utilizing logistics robots built on advanced AI computing and visualization technologies, the companies announced today.
The collaboration centers on implementing an end-to-end system based on NVIDIA technologies — from training and testing through to deployment — with robots developed using one software architecture, running on NVIDIA’s open Isaac robotics platform.
BMW Group’s objective is to enhance logistics factory flow to produce custom-configured cars more rapidly and efficiently. Once developed, the system will be deployed to BMW Group factories worldwide.
The collaboration uses NVIDIA DGX AI systems and Isaac simulation technology to train and test the robots; NVIDIA Quadro ray-tracing GPUs to render synthetic machine parts to enhance the training; and a new lineup of multiple AI-enabled robots built on the Isaac software development kit, powered by high-performance NVIDIA Jetson and EGX edge computers.
Developed on the NVIDIA Isaac SDK, the robots utilize a number of powerful deep neural networks, addressing perception, segmentation, pose estimation and human pose estimation to perceive their environment, detect objects, navigate autonomously and move objects. These robots are trained both on real and synthetic data using NVIDIA GPUs to render ray-traced machine parts in a variety of lighting and occlusion conditions to augment real data.
The real and synthetic data are then used to train deep neural networks on NVIDIA DGX systems. The robots are then continuously tested in NVIDIA’s Isaac Simulators for both navigation and manipulation, operating on NVIDIA’s Omniverse platform, where multiple BMW Group personnel in different geographies can all work in one simulated environment.
