“Physical AI” is coming to your car

Physical AI voices Such a contradiction in terms. Computer but body?

But to marketing engineers, it’s the latest term of art, a buzzword meant to point us as citizens toward a bright and promising technological future.

Back here on Earth, this term is perhaps most useful as a way to understand how car companies think of themselves now: as technology pioneers. It’s also a useful shortcut for understanding how attractive the auto industry is to companies that make chips—What could it be An opportunity worth $123 billion by 2032, an increase of about 85% from 2023. CES The just-held Consumer Technology Show in Las Vegas always has its share of robotics demos, but this year’s presentations showed how the world of robots, cars and chips is growing ever larger.

First, to define (marketing) terms: “Physical AI” is how technology developers eventually hope autonomous systems will interact with the real world, by using camera and sensor data to truly understand and think about what is going on around them, and perform complex tasks to respond. Physical AIs are humanoid robots that do daily work on the Hyundai factory floor, such as Google DeepMind, Boston Dynamics, and the Korean automaker. They announced that they will do so in the coming months. It’s a car that drives itself in complex traffic situations, or undertakes a more complex task: seamlessly handing over control between a human driver and a software-driven driver. Physical AI allows autonomous systems such as cameras, robots, and self-driving cars to perceive, understand, reason, and execute or coordinate complex actions in the real world.

It is no coincidence that the companies making the loudest noise about physical AI are chip manufacturers, including Nvidia and arm. The former announced a new, entirely open source line of AI models targeting autonomous systems; The latter first appeared A Physical AI section at CES. They stand to make a significant change in this trend.

Witness, for example, the display of autonomy-related announcements at CES, all of which will require some powerful computing resources on board.

Ford says it will sell a system that allows drivers to start their cars Without looking at the road ahead of them By 2028. Afeela, a battery-powered collaboration between Sony and Honda, will be launched Driving on their own In most situations at some point, the date will be determined later. Nvidia will Chip supply For Chinese automaker Geely’s new “intelligent driving system,” which will eventually transition to what the company calls “high-level autonomous driving.” Nvidia is also involved in Mercedes-Benz’s new drive system, Debuts in the US this year. Ultimately, the company says the system should be able to drive between home and work without assistance. “This is really huge business for us,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said of self-driving cars during his presentation at CES.

“The central brain of the vehicle will now be larger quantum leaps — hundreds of times larger — and that’s what (chipmakers) are selling,” says Mark Wakefield, head of the global automotive market at consultancy AlixPartners. “They see a big future in these vehicles.”

No wonder marketers have found a new and exciting way to describe it.