Automotive Engineering - May 2024 - 9

TECHNOLOGY REPORT
AI
AI, digital twins reshaping advertising and car creation at JLR
...a user can say, " Take me to the top of the mountain " ...
... and the system quickly responds and can then adjust again ...
Better digital twins powered by more
powerful AI are going to change not just
how car commercials are created in the
future, but could open the door to entirely
new design and engineering methods.
That was one message delivered at a
panel discussion on " Generative AI and
Industrial Digitalization in the
Automotive Industry " at NVIDIA's GTC
2024 event in San Jose, California, in
March. Jaguar Land Rover's chief data
and AI officer, Chrissie Kemp, said JLR
was able to leverage the digital twin
capability in NVIDIA's Omniverse platform,
including the Edify and Picasso
microservices for generative AI, to render
high-fidelity images of a Defender
in its appropriate environments just by
using conversational prompts. Saying,
" take me to the mountains, " for example,
transforms the background of the
photorealistic video, making it look like
the car is driving there.
" When you live in a house of brands
like we do now, we're just imagining the
potential of what this could do for
Range Rover, for new Jaguar and beyond, "
she said. " To be able to just literally
say, 'I want to see this Explorer
pack,' or 'I want to see in Pangea green,'
it blows your mind about what's possible.
It makes you think more about
digital twins. It makes you think about
the creative process, of the beginning.
" Imagine you're conceiving a new vehicle.
Imagine you want to see that vehicle
throughout its entire life, how it's
been driving, if it's been autonomous,
what its behaviors have been with client
A, but then maybe it's been owned by
client B. And you can really imagine this
kind of digital copy of every physical
asset that we have. And I think that's
truly amazing with what's now possible. "
Accenture's six-week project
JLR worked with NVIDIA and Accenture
on the project, which took just six
weeks to come together. JLR provided
the digital vehicle model and models of
the various parts and Accenture designers
added material changes and " eye
candy " like the background mountains
with an eye towards using the files in
future advertisments, said Teemu
Nordman, who works on ramping up
Omniverse technology at Accenture.
" You can use the Picasso for AI to build
this implementation, " Nordman told SAE
Media. " They are currently building
360-degree API to generate these pictures
so that you don't need to bring your
car to a specific location to shoot. What
we can do here is move the background
and car on this specific timescale to demonstrate
that it's really there, not just a
video. The tool is for the marketing on
JLR's side so that they don't need to have
the real shooting and a real car anymore. "
The technology could one day be
used by JLR customers, too.
Despite how easy it will be to make
digital advertising assets in the future,
Kemp said JLR would keep the digital
situations based on what's possible in
the real world.
Kemp said it is still early days, but
JLR will have a policy about being open
with the public when it uses AI, but
don't ask her what that is just yet.
" We will absolutely have a policy, "
she said. " We've only just started, but
we absolutely will have one. "
Sebastian Blanco
... when the user might say, " I prefer green, with big wheels " ...
... opening up the door for what's possible not only with
configurators but also as tools for designers and engineers.
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
May 2024 9
ALL IMAGES: ACCENTURE
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