Continental
Canvas Category OEM : Automotive
Continental develops pioneering technologies and services for sustainable and connected mobility of people and their goods. Founded in 1871, the technology company offers safe, efficient, intelligent and affordable solutions for vehicles, machines, traffic and transportation.
Assembly Line
Continental and SoftServe Deliver Generative AI-Powered Virtual Factory Solutions with OpenUSD
Continental, a leading German automotive technology company and innovator for automotive display solutions, is developing AI-powered virtual factory solutions to address these shifts and their impact on their manufacturing operations such as shorter development cycles and increased time-to-market pressures. As a pioneer of sustainable and connected technologies in automotive, their solutions are using the latest simulation and generative AI technologies to transform manufacturing operations, enhance team productivity, and accelerate innovation to meet changing consumer needs.
In addition, Continental leveraged the expertise of SoftServe, an IT consulting and digital services provider and trusted NVIDIA partner, to add generative AI functionalities to their virtual factory solutions and further enhance the efficiency of their engineering teams.
This post explains two virtual factory solutions developed on the NVIDIA Omniverse platform and Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD)
- ContiVerse, an immersive digital twin application that enables Continental’s engineers to innovate, collaborate, and drive efficiency across their global operations.
- Industrial Co-Pilot, a virtual agent that brings together generative AI and immersive 3D visualization to enable factory teams to increase productivity for maintenance.
🇩🇪 Continental Backs Digital Factory for Auto Parts Production
Continental is leading a consortium of production specialists in a bid to make automotive component production a fully digital process. The Tier 1 supplier is one of eight IT and process optimization companies, universities and specialist start-ups taking part in a project dubbed “Digitalization of the Industrialization Process in the Automotive and Supplier Industries” (DIAZI) funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action.
The DIAZI project promotes the notion of the “digital factory” which could see new production plants started up virtually before commissioning. Employing artificial intelligence, this step could make it possible to continuously improve processes, make accurate productivity predictions and reduce downtime owing to in-depth data analysis of all machines involved. In this way, production plants of a company, as well as suppliers’ production sites, can be digitally connected for fast, scalable and high-quality production.
Aurora Partnering with Continental to deliver a commercially scalable autonomous trucking system
Continental and Aurora Innovation, Inc. (NASDAQ: AUR) announced an industry-first partnership to deliver the commercially scalable, future generation of Aurora’s flagship integrated hardware and software system—the Aurora Driver. Leaning on more than 150 years of expertise and its global manufacturing footprint, Continental plans to industrialize the Aurora Driver hardware and help broaden adoption of Aurora’s autonomous trucking service. Combined with Aurora’s existing vehicle manufacturer partnerships, this first-of-its-kind, innovative partnership will help Aurora achieve the commercial scale and cost structure necessary to execute on its mission to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly.
Within the exclusive partnership, Continental will develop a new fallback system for the Aurora Driver with improved system reliability and cost. In the unlikely event of a failure in the primary autonomy system, a fallback system is designed to ensure a driverless truck can continue the driving task until it reaches a safe position. Continental will also manage the complete lifecycle of the autonomous hardware kits and provide maintenance procedures as well as services for Aurora Driver-powered trucks in the field.
🚙 Germany-based DeepDrive bags €15M to develop ‘revolutionary’ drive units for EVs
Munich-based DeepDrive, a high-tech company that claims to offer revolutionary drive units for electric vehicles, announced on Tuesday that it has raised €15M in a Series A round of funding. The round was co-led by top mobility investors BMW i Ventures and co-pace GmbH.
Continental and Ambarella Partner On Assisted and Automated Driving Systems With Full Software Stack
At CES 2023, technology company Continental and Ambarella, Inc., an edge AI semiconductor company, announced a strategic partnership. The two companies will jointly develop scalable, end-to-end hardware and software solutions based on artificial intelligence (AI), for assisted and automated driving (AD), on the way to autonomous mobility. The strategic collaboration builds on Continental’s announcement in November to integrate Ambarella’s energy-efficient System-on-Chip (SoC) family into its Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). Compared to other domain controller SoCs, Ambarella’s “CV3-AD” chip family provides higher performance to process sensor data faster and more comprehensively for greater environmental perception and safer mobility, at up to five times higher power efficiency. The partners are combining Continental’s software and hardware expertise and broad portfolio of automotive system solutions with Ambarella’s computer vision know-how, powerful SoCs and software modules. In addition to the development of camera-based perception solutions for ADAS, Continental and Ambarella are focusing on scalable full-stack systems for Level 2+ up to highly automated vehicles. These full-stack solutions take a multi-sensor approach, including Continental’s high-resolution cameras, radars and lidars, as well as the associated control units and the required software. Vehicle manufacturers will be able to flexibly integrate the joint system solutions into their latest vehicle generations. In electric vehicles, the energy-efficient solutions reduce power consumption and cooling demands, contributing to a lower battery weight of several kilograms (estimated 6 pounds). This results in an increased average range of about 5-10 kilometers (3-6 miles) with the same battery capacity, based on a typical configuration. To serve the growing market for assisted and automated driving, while paving the way for autonomous mobility, the partners aim to have these joint solutions ready for global series production in 2026.