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Comma.ai will ship a $999 autonomous driving add-on by the end of this year
- Houshalter 10y agoSome thoughts in no particular order, edited from an IRC discussion I just had on this: The price is extremely low. If you drive just 20 minutes per day, and your time is worth at least minimum wage, it makes sense to buy this for just a year, and hopefully it lasts longer than that. But there is a monthly subscription cost ($300 per year) i didn't factor in. And wtf, since when does hardware have a subscription cost? Oh, and to purchase one you need to have lots of "points" with the company, which you can earn by using their app. This is really weird, why not just raise the price if you can't meet demand? The price also doesn't seem high enough to cover the risk. If each accident costs 10 million in lawsuits (i have no idea how much they will actually cost, but that seems like a good made up number, and corporate legal fees are expensive anyway) then they better have less than 1 accident per 10,000 vehicles that use it, just to break even. honestly i hope they have 0 accidents because they could bring in regulators and ruin the fun for everyone, as well as the very delicate reputation of self driving cars (people are already predisposed to distrust machines) I can't believe this works at all. Wouldn't you need like multiple gpus to process all this camera data in real time? How do you account for the variance between vehicles? How many cameras do they have and what is the resolution? That unit looks really small. It looks like it's just trained by predicting what a human would do. Human drivers are imperfect, and so I imagine this machine will learn to imitate the imperfections of human drivers, combined with it's own imperfections. It's also unclear how they trained it, because the dash cam videos don't give information on when users tapped the brakes or moved the steering wheel. They must be doing some interesting semi-supervised learning. Apparently the cars have limits on how hard it can slam on the brakes or turn the wheel. He advertises this as a good thing that will prevent the AI from doing anything too bad, but I don't see how. This limits what the AI can do in a real emergency. Worse, it suggests that the AI needs these training wheels. That without them it would cause accidents, and that's very concerning. I just can't believe that this works. Deep learning is completely amazing and can get 99% accuracy, but this requires 99.9999%. Those extra 9's are super super hard. Fortunately this doesn't need to be perfect, it only needs to be better than humans. And while deep learning is starting to beat humans in some machine vision tasks, I'm not confident this is true in general. In the real world there will be weird edge cases, like a car painted in a very atypical pattern, or ice on the road, or a bug on the windshield, etc. Humans are more capable of handling new, out of sample situations, and machines can fail epically at them.
- dexterdog 10y agoMost accidents cost nowhere near $10 million. Hell, the 9/11 payouts only averaged $1.7 mil.
- Houshalter 10y agoYes but that's very different. Most accidents aren't the suing a company but a driver. This would be more like someone suing a car manufacturer because they made a faulty steering wheel or something. And I based that on the economic value of life, as estimated by various government agencies to be around that number: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Life_Value_in_the_US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Life_Value_in_th... But it should also include legal fees which aren't cheap at all.
- dexterdog 10y agoYou're also assuming fatalities which are not common. You're also assuming that the software company will be able to be found liable after both a waiver and a proven history of safety testing. Currently we have about 15 fatalities per 100k drivers. 40% of those are alcohol related so I'm going to count those as saves right away. Many of the rest are weather/sleeping/texting/etc that are easily savable. Even if we pretend those will all still happen, the goal is a 10x safety increase which would mean .9 per 100k. Even at your outlandish 10M number that would not kill the company, but the reality is closer to 1/10 that amount and even less if the legal hurdles are properly-managed.
- nacs 10y ago> And wtf, since when does hardware have a subscription cost Well there is a pretty important software component and I'd guess that this allows them to fund ongoing development of that and give you regular updates (this is a pretty early version so I'd imagine at least monthly software updates after purchase). > Wouldn't you need like multiple gpus to process all this camera data in real time Hotz demoed an early prototype on the road in Nevada to a reporter months ago that was wired up to a single Ubuntu-Linux powered laptop if I remember correctly so I'm assuming probably just 1 integrated GPU required.
- Kenji 10y agoThe company’s Autopilot system is in active use, and in fact just got an update this past weekend that should vastly improve its performance and decrease the possibility that the car doesn’t brake when it should. I am not gonna lie - that does not give me a lot of confidence in this system. "Oh, and by the way, it sometimes doesn't brake when it should." That quickly equals injury or even death with a car. You do not want to move fast and break things with your car.
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- mikeash 10y agoHow many crashes can be summed up as "the driver didn't break when they should"? The system doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be better than the human. And actually, it doesn't even have to be better than the human: only the combination of the system and the human needs to be better than just the human alone.
- wodenokoto 10y agoLots of people everyday don't brake when they should.
- isuckatcoding 10y agoJailbreaking cars now? Good for him! Can't wait to see this in action.
- stale2002 10y agoGo Go GeoHotz! You need to host meetups or something sometime so I can come by and checkout your kick ass awesome self driving cars. -bcwade
- asimuvPR 10y agoAll I can think about is the reliability of the hardware and how a failure could set back the market years (if not more due to regulation). I really hope this was properly engineered by seasoned automotive engineers. fixed typo
- joesmo 10y agoIf it really works like they say and can be added to any car, that's pretty huge. I'd definitely buy one. I wonder what it takes to install it ...
- ilaksh 10y agoThey mentioned the car has to have built in radar already.
- gravypod 10y agoWhat car has built in radar? I'd love to get one and have it repeatedly send out radar pulses so cops think I'm going 200MPH.
- trevyn 10y agoMy understanding is that this will only work with late-model Honda/Acura with LKAS & ACC packages, they hack into these systems for control. http://automobiles.honda.com/sensing/ http://automobiles.honda.com/sensing/
- ilaksh 10y agoOK so reading that, those new cars actually have most if not all of the self driving autopilot type features built in, very similar to Tesla (but not anywhere near Googles level). So I am guessing this device mainly just engages those built-in systems a little more frequently than they were designed? I mean what does the product actually do, or is it just basically Honda didn't want to market it as self driving yet but this guy decided he would?
- mortenjorck 10y agoMountain View to San Francisco Is this product actually just limited to driving 280 / 101? If so, that's a really interesting way to launch a minimum viable product in the self-driving space: Obviously you can't launch with anything incomplete in terms of safety, but you can launch with a highly restricted supported geography.
- j-walker 10y agoThat would also help them in terms of weather predictability (no snow, very rarely rains)....
- Fricken 10y agoHe's saying that he's done that drive without touching the wheel. It will work in other places, but he emphasizes that you still have to pay attention, as with autopilot. He gives the full talk here: https://techcrunch.com/video/george-geohot-hotz-presents-the-comma-one/57d8713d1c689950401ac8c2/ https://techcrunch.com/video/george-geohot-hotz-presents-the... Yes, he's a punk and seemingly on drugs, but surprisingly, Hotz is not a bullshitter as far as I can tell.
- jsmthrowaway 10y ago> Yes, he's a punk and seemingly on drugs What makes you say this?
- trevyn 10y agoWell, there's this: http://abovethelaw.com/2012/03/famed-hacker-arrested-for-pot-possession-en-route-to-sxsw/ http://abovethelaw.com/2012/03/famed-hacker-arrested-for-pot...
- radicality 10y agoEven the moderator in this video asks him "Whatever you are on, I want some" :P
- Fricken 10y ago
- slg 10y agoHow does this actually control the vehicle? Is there a physical component that literally moves the steering wheel or presses the brakes?
- hoahluke 10y agoIt only works with vehicles which have built-in capability of auto steering and braking
- slg 10y agoWhat do you mean by "auto steering and braking"? Does this simply turn on settings that already exist in the car or does this actually control the car through fly by wire commands? If it is the latter, is this something that car manufacturers actively support third parties doing? To the layman like me, that seems like a huge potential liability.
- trevyn 10y agoThe latter. I remember listening to an interview with George where he chose Honda/Acura because they're "generally hands off about these kind of things" meaning aftermarket mods.
- MBCook 10y agoSo basically it should work if it's a drive by wire car.
- astazangasta 10y agoZipcar routinely starts and stops cars by satellite; OnStar pulls speeding fugitives over for the cops. In the 'this is bad' domain, some people say Michael Hastings was killed by remote software exploit of his car.
- tim333 10y agoI believe Honda have given them permission to do this. The unit communicates digitally with Hondas built in systems.
- uxcn 10y ago“It is fully functional. It’s about on par with Tesla Autopilot,” Hotz said. It doesn’t have a lot of sensors as the Comma One relies on built-in car front radars and comes with a camera. This seems a bit precarious.
- dawnerd 10y agoMy car, a Passat 2016 has both of those and does an okay job keeping itself in the lane and such. Only with VW would be more aggressive about updating their cars firmware. They've got all the components to be pushing forward. But just like all the other car companies they'd rather wait until 2017 models to make any improvements.
- brianbreslin 10y agoIts probably built into their old school model that even if they could do firmware updates (likely still via USB), that they don't in order to get you to replace the entire vehicle sooner. Just speculating
- primitivesuave 10y agoI would love nothing more than for Bay Area congestion to be solved by self-driving cars, but I take this announcement with a grain of salt because it lacks any mention of liabilities and regulatory hurdles. Unless the management can answer the difficult questions, unforeseen difficulties likely await anyone who installs this device in their car. Insurance companies may refuse to cover accidents caused by the device, and automakers may even void the warranty if there is any demonstrable link between self-driving and increased engine wear & tear. I am fairly confident that self-driving will proliferate a feature offered by the automaker at the time of purchase, just as adaptive cruise control and lane assist is becoming commonplace right now. It may be difficult to convince an average consumer to rig up a device in their car that isn't supported by their automaker.
- uxcn 10y agoAutonomous driving isn't really regulated though. Google's Chauffeur is the only autonomous software I'm aware has even passed a state driving test.
- primitivesuave 10y agoThat's a good point, although what I'm more concerned with is industry pushback against third-party self-driving upgrades, similar to how ECU tampering voids the warranty of most cars.
- uxcn 10y agoAutonomous software is a lot more complex than the software the ECU uses (which is still complex), so there may be a genuine argument against allowing people to modify cars not designed for autonomous driving. It definitely raises a really serious liability question. Even with those systems working exactly as designed, there are some serious liability questions I don't think anyone has really answered yet.
- mikeash 10y agoIt's a driver assistance feature, meant to be roughly on par with Tesla's Autopilot. There are no regulatory hurdles to clear here, as the tens of thousands of Teslas on the road can attest. Certainly there are huge regulatory and liability issues to address before full autonomy, but that's not what this is about.
- BWStearns 10y agoThis may be insensitive but is the name too close to "coma" given the odds that one of their users will end up in one (through the product's fault or not)?
- philplckthun 10y agoWow! Slow down there, Satan. I can already see the headlines.
- BWStearns 10y agoReally now, Satan? That's all I had to do to get the top job in hell? Do I get to be the second coming for holding elevator doors when I'm in a rush? I was just questioning the wisdom of passing out the free headline tragedy-puns with your branding. It would be an equally terribly name for a line of DIY transcranial direct current stimulation kits. Again, it's not because these products are dangerous[0], but that they will likely be perceived that way. Any possible blame will be laid at their feet at least through innuendo, so why make it easy and catchy? [0] I make no assertion about the actual safety of either.
- cpach 10y agoMy first thought as well...
- goeric 10y agoHuge props to Geohot for getting this to market (barring it ships). Curious - if it replaces the rear-view mirror, then what do you use as a rear-view mirror?
- etendue 10y ago> The $999 price point is designed to be affordable, and is possible because of the components Comma uses in its product, which tend to be inexpensive off-the-shelf electronics. "Inexpensive off-the-shelf electronics" aren't rated for automotive environmental conditions, nor do they have the immunity to interference (e.g., single event upsets) required for safety-critical systems.
- TD-Linux 10y agoOff-the-shelf in the context of electronics means that they didn't custom design some parts of it (for example using a SoC module rather than custom DDR layout), not that the parts are consumer rated.
- foobarqux 10y agoJust wait until Comma.ai causes an accident and the NHTSA finds they can't do an analysis of the system because that system is an end-to-end neural network.
- justathrowout2 10y agoHotz is a proven, remarkable engineer. But if there was ever a case for a "business guy" to be involved with a pitch this was it. His messaging works at some level - "I'm shipping something REAL and SMALL and ACHIEVABLE" But his pitch has two huge problems: (a) The delivery is rough. He comes across as patronizing and manic. I want to put my life in his hands? (b) He fumbles (like Musk has) with the difference between his pitch "Mountain View to San Francisco without touching the wheel" and the reality "It is fully functional. It’s about on par with Tesla Autopilot" Lots of potential in the product but for me this pitch diminished the chances that I'd ever own the device.
- lucb1e 10y ago> Hotz is a proven, remarkable engineer. Wait, Hotz, that name... is this Geohot? ... Turns out, it is! [1] That makes this statement a lot more believable to me. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz
- wingerlang 10y agoBoth the video and the article is littered with "Geohot", FYI.
- cbHXBY1D 10y agoYes, it's geohot's company but I don't think it lends it anymore credibility. Hacking is very different from building a viable product. Moreover, some of his comments make me distrust his judgement. Just from a CNN article this year: > "For awhile, I thought it was going to be incredibly difficult to contribute," he said. In January 2015, he started working as a researcher at Vicarious, a company that's building artificial intelligence algorithms. "I started reading all the papers. I thought, 'This stuff isn't that hard. This isn't ultra sophisticated. This is basic,'" he said. Moreover, "the mistakes people are making are basic." > "I started to look around at the other players. These people are noobs," he said. [1] http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/04/technology/george-hotz-comma-ai-andreessen-horowitz/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/04/technology/george-hotz-comma...
- dharma1 10y agoI wonder how many hours after launch until the first accident, and who is liable
- jlarocco 10y agoThis is by far the sketchiest autonomous driving product I've seen so far. Does the NHTSA do any testing for products like this? I'm usually not big on government regulation, but there definitely needs to be some kind of regulation and oversight for this kind of thing.
- xkcd-sucks 10y agothey must have really good liability insurance
- dexterdog 10y agoDisclaimers are much cheaper.
- joering2 10y agoWow, its incredible how many people bash this startup here, incredible to see it from this community here. I mean what they have done to you? It's not like they gonna sell tickets to Hell or scam someone, so what's the big deal with more entrepreneurship in the town?? Be nice to your fellow entrepreneurship -- you might end up working for them one day.
- mdonahoe 10y agoYou may think differently when someone you know or care about is killed by an AI controlled vehicle. Apparent reckless use of technology frightens people, regardless of the actual risk.
- joering2 10y agoI'm not saying their solution is perfect. Nothing is. But will I send a hate mail to utensil factory because I cut myself with their kitchen knife? No, I won't.
- biofox 10y agoThis is an extremely irresponsible attitude, and I'm shocked to see it expressed on HN! As engineers / technologists / experts, we have a duty as a community to ensure our products are safe! Of course, end users also have a duty to ensure they use our products responsibly -- but the whole point of autonomous vehicles is that the end user has no control. They are entrusting their safety to the product. The situations are in no way comparable.
- nzjrs 10y agoThere is a gulf of a difference between saying 'nothing is perfect' and therfore excusing crap - and making a reliable safe product. That difference is engineering, and we undervalue it at our peril.
- dexterdog 10y agoDo you think comma.ai is undervaluing it? Do you think they don't know that they will be under an irrational microscope the second they release an MVP?
- cbanek 10y agoPretty exciting for sure. Interesting that they're talking about California driving. In an episode of Bloomberg's Hello World I saw recently, Hotz actually demonstrated his self driving car in Nevada. They mentioned that the state of California asked him to stop driving on the public roads. Regulations ahoy!
- cloudjacker 10y agoI rang their doorbell once, might have ended up working there!
- spectrum1234 10y agoSurprised with all the skepticism here. It's not perfect but this guy is a hardware, software, and AI genius and this could very well speed up the self driving race by several years or even more. When it comes to price, it could speed things up by more than a decade. With some funding and a solid team this could move incredibly quickly.
- zump 10y agoAI genius? lmao
- stevehiehn 10y agoThis seems really frig'n dangerous.
- nzjrs 10y agoWouldn't touch this with a 30 foot pole. Hopefully sane legislation will prevail and end this madness soon.
- pmontra 10y agoThey say they get the video feed. I can imagine why they want it (training?) but having somebody potentially watching what's in front of your car all the time is much worse than having them know where you are. I won't buy that product. However I think that if this really works it will sell well.
- DanBC 10y ago> I can imagine why they want it (training?) Also avoiding liability.
- spiderfarmer 10y agoGeorge is trashtalking the sellouts, but I wouldn't be surprised if comma.ai is sold in the first quarter of 2017.
- dharma1 10y agoIt may well be the strategy - I'm not convinced they actually expect people to stop worrying about death, buy and use the $999 box. They will certainly not ship large amounts of units by end of the year, and risk several accidents at this stage with effectively very alpha software/hardware combo. I think they will get somewhere, if not in self driving cars then something else to do with machine learning.
- dexterdog 10y agoThis guy is a different breed. He had a chance to work for Tesla, but he wanted to do it himself. I hope I'm not just in the fog on this, but I want to believe that he is a true disruptor.
- Rainymood 10y agoHaven't seen any comments on the actual presentation. I'm about halfway in so far and am really enjoying it. His energy, his style, his slides, it all just fits so well together he feels like a less polished and maybe a bit more crazy mix between Balmer and Jobs. I love it. A lot of fun to watch!
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- kelvin0 10y agoAnyone seen the programming challenge on the comma.ai website: http://geohot.com/projective_challenge.tar.gz http://geohot.com/projective_challenge.tar.gz "In the pics directory, you'll find 5 short "videos" with 10 frames each of driving the same set of road. Different cars, different mountings, etc... Your goal, write a program to localize them all with respect to each other in 3 space. Deliver a 3-D map of the location and orientation of all pictures." Very cool!
- user731955373 10y agoPretty sure this will inevitably become coma.ai.
- joseakle 10y agoWhy not position it as an accident avoidance system? Most accidents occur due to distracted drivers. A self braking car preventing drivers from rear ending other cars can easily be justified as a good investment. Having something like this to "upgrade" any car to a better safety system makes more sense to me from a marketing standpoint.
- omgmog 10y agoHopefully when it ships it'll be more than an Android phone and some 3D-printed ABS... http://i.imgur.com/VIqWuDG.jpg http://i.imgur.com/VIqWuDG.jpg
- henrikschroder 10y agoAm I the only one who looked at this and thought it was satire through and through? He effectively launched the one comma club? It had a little too many digs at other SV startups and companies, and references to the HBO show...