Laurens Jansma

5/5 (2)

Today, GPU manufacturer Nvidia announced a new, extremely powerful computing platform (Pegasus) for use in autonomous vehicles. In the announcement, Nvidia says Drive PX Pegasus is capable of over 320 trillion operations per second. That makes it more than 10 times more powerful than the previous generation Drive PX 2, the technology Tesla currently uses [1]. In this blog post, I’ll explain why this is a pretty big deal and what the implications for future automated driving are.

For starters, let’s refresh a little bit on levels of automated driving. In 2014, the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) published a standard with a hefty title: “Taxonomy and Definitions for Terms Related to Driving Automation Systems for On-Road Motor Vehicles”. In September 2016, this document was revised and the SAE decided that the following definitions should be used [2]:

Level 0 – No Automation:
Level 1 – Driver Assistance
Level 2 – Partial Automation
Level 3 – Conditional Automation
Level 4 – High Automation
Level 5 – Full Automation

Currently, no cars higher than Level 2 are commercially available. Audi claims that its Audi A8 Sedan is capable of Level 3 autonomy, but laws & regulations do not allow Audi to turn this on yet. But what Nvidia promises us, is level 5 autonomy: in official words, this means “the full-time performance by an Automated Driving System of all aspects of the dynamic driving task under all roadway and environmental conditions that can be managed by a human driver” [2].

Why does Nvidia think it can manage this? Well, Pegasus contains an amount of power equivalent to “a 100-server data center in the form-factor size of a license plate” [1]. This is necessary because all data captured by the car’s sensors needs to be processed — without error! — in near real-time. And Nvidia is quite confident that it can do this. Partnering with Deutsche Post DHL, Nvidia is about to deploy a fleet of self-driving trucks that should hit the road in 2019 [3].

Based on today’s announcements by Nvidia, I think we’re about to witness a new revolution in automated driving sooner rather than later. What do you think? Will this announcement “rev up” the automotive industries as Nvidia promises us?

References:

[1] https://investorplace.com/2017/10/nvidia-corporation-nvda-stock-soars-on-drive-px-pegasus-reveal/

[2] https://www.sae.org/news/3544/

[3] https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2017/10/10/gtc-europe-holodeck-drive-px/

5/5 (2)

In short, blockchain is a platform “that provides a secure way of making and recording transactions, agreements and contracts – anything that needs to be recorded and verified as having taken place.” [1] It is also said that the blockchain is “a platform for truth and trust.” [2]. One of the areas in which a platform for truth and trust is most needed, is foreign aid: each day, money and goods donated to developing countries disappear because of, for example, warlords and other criminals.

Currently, the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) is using blockchain to aid in providing foreign aid to developing countries: a successful pilot for the ‘Building Blocks’ project has been extended indefinitely, to “deliver assistance more effectively, (…) faster, cheaper and more secure” [3].

Real-world results of this project are currently visible in the Azraq camp in Jordan. It is currently home to 36.000 Syrian refugees, each having received a food stipend from the WFP. The camp has a very high-tech “grocery store”, where recipients of the food stipends confirm their identity through an iris scanner. While this form of authentication is unique on its own, the back-end is even more interesting. The funds and products for the grocery market used to be transferred through third parties like banks (or even warlords!), but now each purchase is directly confirmed with the WFP [3].

Currently, approximately 3.5% of each aid transaction is lost on fees and costs. Across the industry, approximately 30% of funds “don’t reach their intended recipients because of third-party theft or mismanagement”. Bernhard Kowatsch, head of the WFP’s Innovation Accelerator, points out even more added value: “[Building Blocks] provides even higher assurance to individual donors that if you give to the World Food Programme, that money actually reaches the people it’s intended for.” [4]

To me, this sounds like a great improvement. Although we can’t be sure that the recipient, having his eye scanned and confirmed and all, still isn’t a bad guy, we’re at least sure that the transaction is completed and that goods have not disappeared. In addition, it’s good to know that fees and costs are decreasing.

Except for assisting in foreign aid, what other uses could blockchain have in developing countries? Or do you think that there are there a lot of drawbacks for using Blockchain technology? Let me know in the comments.

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References:

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/jan/17/blockchain-digital-technology-development-money

[2] http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/how-blockchains-could-change-the-world

[3] http://innovation.wfp.org/project/building-blocks

[4] https://www.fastcompany.com/40457354/how-blockchain-could-transform-the-way-international-aid-is-distributed