Oxbotica, a UK-based autonomous vehicle software developer, is using advanced artificial intelligence (AI) in the metaverse to accelerate the safe and efficient deployment of AV technology, reducing carbon emissions generated by vehicles driving actual miles.
Oxbotica’s MetaDriver is a suite of tools that includes virtual world simulation, automated discovery of challenging scenarios, and real-time data expansion. It is designed to help AVs answer three core questions: ‘Do I see it right?’, ‘Am I doing it right?’, and ‘Can I trust myself right now?’
MetaDriver generates a vast bank of scenarios which are used to test and refine AV operations and behaviors without ever needing to physically drive in them, accelerating commercial readiness. MetaDriver also provides the ability to build a digital twin representation from real-world gathered data.
The AIs have learned to automatically seek out edge cases, which allows both the testing of autonomy systems against corner cases and for the systems to learn to handle them. It is stated to provide edge-case discovery rates at an average of 1,000 times faster than traditional testing methods, and up to 35,000 times faster in some situations.
Using MetaDriver’s data expansion, the company states that each ‘meta-mile’ can be tested in all conditions, including rain, snow, fog and at night or in the day, eliminating the need to wait for various weather conditions to appear during real-world testing.
Paul Newman, founder and CTO at Oxbotica, said, “Oxbotica MetaDriver is a suite of tools that offers so much more than straight forward simulation. Using the metaverse in this way provides us and our customers with practically unlimited test challenges, revolutionizing how we are accelerating AV commercial deployment to make the Earth move.
“Oxbotica MetaDriver allows us to do the hard miles without the conventional need to physically drive the miles. The autonomous vehicle industry has become over indexed on the number of miles traveled as a synonym for safety, but what we actually care about is coverage of hard cases, not the endless miles endured. Oxbotica MetaDriver addresses this in a new and exciting way.”