Luminary Cloud, a leading provider of scalable engineering simulation technology, announced the launch of SHIFT Models, a pioneering suite of Physics AI foundation models. The first model in the series, SHIFT-SUV, is the world’s first Physics AI foundation model and dataset purpose-built for real-world SUV aerodynamic analysis. Developed in collaboration with Honda and NVIDIA, this breakthrough enables automotive designers and engineers to conduct real-time, interactive aerodynamic evaluations during the early stages of vehicle design.
Addressing a Core Industry Challenge
SHIFT-SUV, combined with Luminary’s Physics AI virtual wind tunnel, fills a critical gap in the automotive design workflow by uniting design aesthetics with performance insights. Until now, automotive teams have been hindered by limited tools that delay performance-based decision-making in the concept phase. While simulation datasets like DrivAer exist for sedans, the market has lacked a high-quality, purpose-built foundation model for SUVs—an urgent need given that SUVs represented 48% of global vehicle sales in 2023, making them the fastest-growing segment in the industry.
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“This project represents a fundamental shift in automotive design methodology,” said Pete Schlampp, CEO at Luminary Cloud.
“By providing instantaneous, physics-informed aerodynamic feedback, our open-source foundation model enables designers and engineers to collaborate more effectively at the earliest stages of development, saving time and money—while also advancing innovation.”
A Next-Gen Physics AI Approach to Automotive Design
The SHIFT-SUV dataset was built by simulating thousands of geometry variants based on the AeroSUV open-geometry model using Luminary’s high-fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) platform. This robust simulation data forms the foundation of the SHIFT-SUV model, which is trained using NVIDIA’s PhysicsNeMo framework and its DoMINO architecture, purpose-built for external automotive aerodynamics.
This Physics AI-driven process eliminates the complexity of traditional workflows, empowering designers with real-time aerodynamic insights—without the need for physical testing or manual simulation setup. With the model deployed in Luminary Cloud’s virtual wind tunnel, teams can visualize and test concepts in realistic, physics-informed environments.
Open-Source Model to Scale Throughout 2024
The SHIFT-SUV model launches with approximately 1,000 high-fidelity simulations, with a roadmap to scale the dataset to 25,000 simulations by year-end. Luminary Cloud will release new simulation data monthly and roll out pre-trained model versions aligned with key dataset milestones. Both the dataset and trained model will be released as open-source assets, encouraging widespread adoption and innovation within the automotive engineering community.