Self Driving Cars with Human Vision-Based Supercomputer Chip Coming Soon

Self Driving Cars with Human Vision-Based Supercomputer Knight Rider chip coming soon to market as the Scientists at Yale University and New York University are developing a supercomputer on a chip that is capable of navigating a car more quickly and efficiently through the use of a human-based visual system on busy streets.

Eugenio Culurciello says cars are going to drive themselves in the near future, who was an associate professor of electrical engineering at Yale Unversity. He helped design the chip that could make it happen. The Knight Rider microchip contains a supercomputer with the ability to recognize and distinguish surrounding objects, such as other cars, people, trees, lampposts and whatever else can be found on the road.

The supercomputer, which Culurciello and his associates named NeuFlow, was inspired by the mammalian visual system, which imitates a neural network allowing it to interpret the supercomputer’s surroundings. Culurciello says the supercomputer is necessary for implementation into a car, because regular computers wouldn’t be able to handle the complex algorithims done to distinguish the surrounding objects. He said it differs from the precrash braking systems seen on various car models.

“Those warning systems you see on some cars that break automatically if you’re about to crash, those use laser systems. The laser can sense something in the area whereas this is a vision. It actually sees the object. It can actually figure out what things are,” Culurciello.

To develop the complex algorithims that made this vision possible, Culurciello turned to Yann LeCun, a silver professor of Computer Science and Neural Science at New York University. To get it to recognize the objects, LeCun and Culurciello’s NeuFlow processes tens of megapixel images in real time.

Still, there is work to be done before the cars of the future become the present. Culurciello says his team will now have to prove the supercomputer can work in real time. Once the car has tested, the team will analyze data to see where they have made mistakes.

Culurciello says they have not worked with any car companies yet, but would like to. He also said the supercomputer could be used to improve robot navigation into difficult-to-reach locations or provide soldiers with 360-degree synthetic vision.