Hyundai Motors could be abandoning its “Atria AI” end-to-end autonomous driving technology, just a month after the system was unveiled — opting for Nvidia‘s instead.
South Korean media outlet TheElec reported on Tuesday that the company’s Advanced Vehicle Platform (AVP) division gave a “very low score” – 25 out of 100 – to its AI platform in terms of technological sophistication in its evaluation.
Comparatively, Tesla’s autonomous driving technology (the Full Self-Driving software) scored 90 in the same test, and Huawei’s ADS achieved a 70 score.
Both Mobileye’s and Momenta’s systems scored 50 out of 100.
“Atria AI” has been in development for the past year by Hyundai‘s software research subsidiary 42dot.
Earlier this month, the former Nvidia VP Minwoo Park was appointed as the subsidiary’s CEO and the head of the AVP division.
Park spent more than eight years at the US technology company, where he most recently served as Vice-President responsible for bridging Nvidia Research and autonomous vehicle development.
Sources close to the matter cited by TheElec said research staff on the assisted-driving tech department have been transferred to projects working on Nvidia‘s “Alpamayo” VLA model instead.
Leading Hyundai‘s AVP division, Park “could push the technology to commercialization if they perform well in future internal tests,” as stated by the South Korean media outlet.
The report also cited internal voices calling for Hyundai to retain the “Atria AI” brand while using “Alpamayo” as the underlying foundation model.
Using the Waymo Open Dataset, “Atria AI”‘s tests employed a partial convolutional neural network implementation with roll-based control element design.
On the other hand, “Alpamayo” had more than 10 billion parameters and studied data from over 2,500 cities, according to TheElec.
Alpamayo
At the CES earlier this month, Nvidia unveiled “Alpamayo,” which it calls “the world’s first thinking, reasoning, autonomous vehicle AI.”
The VLA model is available open-source, as they aim to speed up the development of autonomous vehicles.
Nvidia’s co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang pointed out that while Tesla and Waymo have strong proprietary self-driving systems, Nvidia is “doing it for everyone else.”
By open-sourcing the technology, the American tech company allows any automaker to deploy a competitive AV platform.
Last month, the company had already announced that its software could power a self-driving car, as tested with Mercedes-Benz models scheduled for release later this year.
Additionally, the company aims for the newly unveiled suite of AI chips and AV software stack to power a fleet of driverless vehicles as soon as 2027.
Hyundai and Boston Dynamics
Earlier this month, Hyundai‘s Boston Dynamics unit unveiled its electric “Atlas” robot at the CES to compete directly with Tesla’s “Optimus.”
The group acquired an 80% stake in the American robotics company in June 2021.
The Hyundai‘s Vice President and Head of Robotics Lab Dong Jin Hyun told Bloomberg that the company and its Boston Dynamics unit share “some research” with each other.
The executive added that the “technology has to flow” between both firms and that Hyundai “learns from Boston Dynamics”.
Earlier this month, Hyundai also appointed Milan Kovac, a former Tesla executive, as a group adviser and outside director at robotics subsidiary Boston Dynamics.
