Nvidia stuns by driving a car in real life through virtual reality

Today at Nvidia’s GTC conference the company unveiled a wild technology demo and it’s straight out of Black Panther. Simply put, a driver using virtual reality was remotely controlling a car in real life.

“He’s not with us,” Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, said pointing the driver on the stage. “He’s looking at this virtual world through live video.”

The driver was sitting on the stage of the convention center wearing an HTC Vive and seated in a cockpit-like car with a steering wheel. Using Nvidia’s Holodeck software, a car was loaded (the same Lexus used in Black Panther). Then, a video feed appeared showing a Ford Fusion behind the convention center.

The demo at the show was basic but worked. The driver in VR had seemingly complete control over the vehicle and managed to drive it, live but slowly, around a private lot. He navigated around a van, drove a few hundred feet and parked the car.

The car was empty the whole time.

Nvidia didn’t detail any of the platforms running the systems nor did he announced availability. The demo was just a proof of concept. Jensen even exclaimed “we don’t know what to call it. What do we call it?”

Self-driving technology is a massive market for Nvidia, and the company is a leader in supplying technology. And demos like this are a great way to keep the attention on the company’s capabilities.