NVIDIA wants to power the autonomous robots of the future

NVIDIA is known to most people as a graphics card company, one that specializes in gaming computers, but the company has been trying to diversify these past couple of years. It’s been especially interested in self-driving cars, and has a vision of its hardware powering the smart cars of the future, but looks like that vision isn’t limited to just cars. Earlier today, the company unveiled a credit card-sized module known as Jetson TX1, which NVIDIA hopes will help create a new wave of autonomous devices capable of learning. 

NVIDIA today unveiled a credit-card sized module that harnesses the power of machine learning to enable a new generation of smart, autonomous machines that can learn. The NVIDIA Jetson TX1 module addresses the challenge of creating a new wave of millions of smart devices — drones that don’t just fly by remote control, but navigate their way through a forest for search and rescue; compact security surveillance systems that don’t just scan crowds, but identify suspicious activity; and robots that don’t just perform tasks, but tailor them to individuals’ habits — by incorporating capabilities such as machine learning, computer vision, navigation and more. Jetson TX1 is the first embedded computer designed to process deep neural networks — computer software that can learn to recognize objects or interpret information. This new approach to program computers is called machine learning and can be used to perform complex tasks such as recognizing images, processing conversational speech, or analyzing a room full of furniture and finding a path to navigate across it. Machine learning is a groundbreaking technology that will give autonomous devices a giant leap in capability.