Gaming tech supporting drive to autonomy

Developers of flight simulators and computer games are being employed to help create the software for autonomous vehicles.

Oxbotica, a global leader in autonomous vehicle software, says a video game engine not dissimilar to those behind Fortnite and Call of Duty is helping run its virtual test programme.

Meanwhile, simulation is vital in allowing its engineers to run virtual testing in an infinite number of scenarios; varying environmental conditions, traffic congestion, and modelling unpredictable pedestrian behaviour or scenarios which can’t easily be recreated in the real world.

Todd Gibbs was the first game developer to move to Oxbotica.

He said: “At Oxbotica, we have attracted some of the brightest talent from the video game industry because they bring a speed of development and deployment unique to that industry.

“There is a lot of commonality between developing a chart-topping game and autonomous software, the most valuable being robust coding principles and a focus on CPU efficiency. We are able to write new code, debug and test in real-time without sacrificing robustness or safety.”