DENSO, Carnegie Mellon University to Present Leading AV Research at IEEE’s CVPR 2026

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (May 28, 2026) ― DENSO, a leading mobility supplier, along with academic partner Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), will present innovative autonomous driving research at the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2026, one of the world’s premier conferences for computer vision and artificial intelligence.

Developed in collaboration between the DENSO Pittsburgh Innovation Lab and Carnegie Mellon University, this research presents a method to advance vehicle autonomy by leveraging synthetic data generated from real-world assets to tackle the most challenging edge cases.

“Breakthroughs in vehicle autonomy depend on continuous progress across the full AI ecosystem—from how models are trained and validated to how they operate efficiently in real-world environments,” said Toru Hirano, vice president of North America R&D at DENSO. “The research we are sharing at CVPR reflects our commitment to developing innovative, practical technologies that help enable safer mobility and support our long-term vision for automated driving.”

Grounded Latents for Entity Centric 4D Scene Generation

To advance autonomous driving and simulation applications, researchers at DENSO and CMU introduce a novel approach to generating highly realistic and controllable 3D and 4D driving scenes, using an innovative “grounded latent” representation. 

The method represents scenes as a collection of interpretable, entity centric components, where each vehicle, pedestrian and environmental element is modeled with its own editable latent representation. This enables precise control over object behavior and motion, producing dynamic scenes with improved realism, stable backgrounds and accurate trajectories. The approach supports more scalable simulation and high quality synthetic data generation, helping accelerate the development and validation of autonomous systems.

View the paper abstract at CVPR’s website.

“Our collaboration with DENSO demonstrates how academic research and industry expertise can come together to solve complex challenges in AI and perception,” said Kris Kitani, an associate research professor at the Robotics Institute at CMU’s School of Computer Science. “By advancing capabilities such as simulation, model efficiency and sensing, this work helps accelerate the path from research to real-world autonomous driving applications.”

“This research with Carnegie Mellon University is a vital step forward in scaling AI world models for autonomous driving,” said Shawn Hunt, a software engineer at DENSO’s Pittsburgh Innovation Lab. “It opens the door to more reliable virtual testing, scenario generation and training environments for future autonomous vehicle systems – all of which translates to safer and more effective vehicle autonomy.”

In addition to DENSO’s research with CMU, CVPR will also feature three academic papers from DENSO IT Laboratory, which is based in Japan, at this year’s event. The details of each are available here.  

Collectively, the research supports DENSO’s broader strategy to enhance vehicle autonomy by strengthening the underlying technologies that power perception, decision-making and system performance. By improving how AI models are trained, simulated and deployed, DENSO continues to evolve its approach to meet the changing needs of mobility while helping enable safer transportation for all. 

 

About DENSO 

Globally headquartered in Kariya, Japan, DENSO is a 7,540.0 billion yen (US$47.2 billion) leading mobility supplier that develops advanced technology and components for nearly every vehicle make and model on the road today. With manufacturing at its core, DENSO invests in around 170 facilities worldwide to provide opportunities for rewarding careers and to produce cutting-edge electrification, powertrain, thermal and mobility electronics products, among others, that change how the world moves. In developing such solutions, the company’s 155,000 global employees are paving the way to a mobility future that improves lives, eliminates traffic accidents, and preserves the environment. DENSO spent around 9.2 percent of its global consolidated sales on research and development in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026. For more information about DENSO’s operations worldwide, visit https://www.denso.com/global.

In North America, DENSO is headquartered in Southfield, Michigan, and employs 23,000+ team members across nearly 50 sites in the U.S, Canada and Mexico. In the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026, DENSO in North America generated $12.7 billion in consolidated sales. To learn more about DENSO operations in the region, please visit https://www.denso.com/us-ca/en/.