BMW Group has chosen Amazon Web Services (AWS) as cloud provider for its automated driving platform. BMW Group will develop its future advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) using AWS to help create new features for its vehicles, “Neue Klasse,” which is set to introduce in 2025. The recent cloud-based system will leverage BMW’s pre existing cloud data hub on AWS, and will use AWS compute, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), internet of things (IoT), machine learning, and storage capabilities to help accelerate delivery of highly automated BMW vehicles.
“In the next decade, consumer habits and expectations will drive more changes in the automotive industry than we’ve seen over the past 30 years. This is just the beginning of a new era of highly automated driving, fueled by innovations in technology and engineering. By collaborating with AWS, the BMW Group, along with our partner, Qualcomm Technologies, is building our new automated driving platform on AWS’s scalable, secure, and reliable infrastructure. We’re tapping into AWS’s ability to help empower the next generation of BMW’s automated driving and parking functions.” says Nicolai Martin, senior vice president of driving experience at BMW Group.
ADAS support drivers with early warning systems and capabilities that make driving safer and more comfortable. These systems use advanced software and onboard sensors to provide driver warnings, automated braking, and steering functions designed to help improve a vehicle’s performance on road. By developing future ADAS platform on AWS, BMW Group’s engineers can respond to customer demands and deliver various features to help improve driving experience. This productivity, supported by cloud, will help BMW continue to create features for its Neue Klasse of vehicles and keep drivers focused on road.
BMW Group has also joined Qualcomm, to co-develop automated driving systems based on open and modular snapdragon ride platform. The systems feature an integrated ride vision software stack to enable 360-degree perception for vehicle. Together with AWS and Qualcomm, BMW Group’s engineers have access to hardware, vision software, and cloud capabilities in an end-to-end automated driving development platform. Placing BMW Group’s automated driving platform in cloud helps break down development silos within vehicle software teams at BMW Group and helps foster greater global collaboration with suppliers to accelerate automated driving.
“As the automotive industry evolves toward a new high-performance, low-power, and highly scalable software-defined vehicle architecture, we are proud to continue our long-standing, strategic co-operation with the BMW Group to co-develop safer and more secure AI-powered driver assistance technologies at scale,” says Nakul Duggal, senior vice president and general manager of automotive and cloud computing at Qualcomm.
“The Qualcomm Cloud AI 100 solution and Snapdragon Ride Platforms help deliver automotive innovation to the BMW Group and leading brands across the globe. This strategic relationship with AWS and BMW brings together leading-edge technologies from our respective industries to deliver a modern cloud-native software development environment.” adds Duggal.
The BMW Group will also use AWS to help scale its capacity to handle vast increases in data creation and usage within automated driving feature development. As automakers deploy higher-level automated driving functions, such as adaptive cruise control, parking assist, and piloted driving, the vehicles create more data for engineering teams to analyse and utilise within future feature development. This cloud-based infrastructure will help provide foundation for BMW Group to develop and deliver various functions for its vehicles, such as lane departure assist, automated lane change, or hands-free driving functions, even faster.
AWS services will help this scalable, automated driving platform based on a common reference architecture, accelerating development life cycle and broadening it across BMW models. For example, platform provides framework needed to process, catalog, and store millions of miles of real-time driving data in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Engineers and data scientists can then search, identify, and visualise relevant driving scenes to develop and train models using Amazon SageMaker, AWS’s service for building, training, and deploying machine learning models in cloud and on edge. Engineers can also develop large scale simulations on AWS compute instances for verification. With this approach, BMW Group can test and validate software versions more productively, helping to ensure system’s safety and shortening time to market.
“Automated driving is about more than just convenience; it’s also aimed at providing driver assistance technology that helps prevents injuries and saves lives,” says Wendy Bauer, general manager of automotive and manufacturing at AWS.
“Implementing these systems on the BMW Group’s international scale requires an approach that can process and analyse vast amounts of data, as well as learn and innovate, so automakers can develop safer and more reliable automated and ADAS systems. Working with AWS and Qualcomm, the BMW Group has the tools required to help make its vision of providing safe, premium quality, high performance, and highly automated driving functions to its customers a reality.” adds Bauer.
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