Joby Aviation has announced a collaboration with NVIDIA, marked by NVIDIA’s selection of Joby as the only aviation launch partner for the new NVIDIA IGX Thor platform. “Powered by the NVIDIA Blackwell architecture, the industrial-grade platform is designed to power the next generation of physical AI applications,” said Joby in a press release. “This unique collaboration will advance development of Joby’s autonomous flight technology Superpilot™ across military and civil platforms”.
“The autonomous systems under development at Joby are poised to complement human intelligence by providing speed, precision, and stamina beyond what a person alone is capable of,” said Gregor Veble Mikić, Flight Research Lead at Joby. “To achieve this, an aircraft needs a powerful onboard computer that can interpret extraordinary amounts of information to make decisions in real-time. Combining NVIDIA’s compute power with our world-class aircraft design, certification and rigorous flight testing capabilities, we’re enabling a new era of safety-first autonomy in aviation.”
Joby is developing Superpilot™ to interact with the world through a continuum of autonomous functions. NVIDIA’s support for industry recognized functional safety standards on the IGX Thor platform allows Joby to pursue certifiable autonomy for near-term defence and long-term civil applications as the Federal Aviation Administration advances the capabilities of national airspace, said the company. Integrating this level of advanced compute can transform operational safety and mission capability, enabling real-time, on-board capabilities such as: autonomous mission management (which enables the aircraft to determine, request and follow optimal flight paths, adapt to changes in weather, air traffic control instructions, or unexpected events, with intuitive human-machine teaming to ensure mission success); radar and perception processing (onboard compute processes high-rate data from Radar, LiDAR and Vision sensors to achieve rich environmental awareness, precise object perception and localization to safely navigate the airspace in all conditions); and sensor fusion (integrated high-performance processing combines data from a diverse range of sensors to deliver reliable and accurate aircraft state estimation and situational awareness in the most challenging environments).
It also establishes a foundation to develop features that enhance operational insight, reliability and performance such as predictive system health monitoring (the aircraft will be capable of refining models of its own function and reliability, predicting when system components might need attention and alerting crew members before it becomes a problem); and “Digital Twin” modelling. With powerful and reliable compute capabilities, an aircraft can carry a “digital twin” model of itself, and the world, that gathers data from every flight to refine its fidelity. This information can then be integrated into mission control systems to optimize performance and efficiency.
For more information
https://www.jobyaviation.com/news/joby-taps-nvidia-to-accelerate-next-era-autonomous-flight/