Crystal Group Accelerating Autonomous Vehicle Development for Harsh Edge Environments

Crystal Group, Inc. announced its increased focus on developing autonomous vehicle (AV) compute systems for industrial and military applications.

Equipped to handle the harsh and unpredictable operating challenges inherent to edge environments, Crystal Group’s rugged AV servers deliver the critical combination of robust computing power with hardened physical assets. This ensures demanding AV applications, like military ground vehicles, submarines and aircraft, heavy construction equipment, and over-the-road trucking, can execute seamless performance regardless of ever-changing conditions.

“Accurate, real-time situational awareness of an 80,000-pound autonomous semi moving down a highway at 70 miles an hour or a weaponized military autonomous aircraft can’t be compromised by even the slightest disruption, whether it’s rough terrain, supply voltage variation, shifting climate conditions, or severe weather,” said Jim Shaw, executive vice president of Engineering at Crystal Group. “Our rugged solutions integrate leading-edge inference engines and compute capabilities with the power, stability, and security. The result is intelligent operations optimized for safety and efficiency.”

Crystal Group’s ability to bring reliable AV functionality to the edge stems from its ability to incorporate robust NVIDIA GPUs needed to process and prioritize the vast amount of data for comprehensive situational awareness with critical advanced thermal management designs. Managing the heat generated by power-hungry AV compute requirements is critical to prevent systems from throttling for seamless operation.

Greater public awareness and government support for autonomous passenger and public transportation vehicles are proliferating the broad adoption of and investment in AV technology across the industrial and defense markets.