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Show HN: Autodrome – Framework for Development of Self-Driving Cars

62 points by vojtamolda 8y ago

msadowski 8y ago
Nice project! I will keep following your progress. Would you mind if at some point I share your project at https://weeklyrobotics.com https://weeklyrobotics.com ?
- vojtamolda 8y ago
  Not at all!
olafduckmark 8y ago
I love how this is based on a game. One might argue that software development was really accelerated by games just as the hardware development was accelerated by the military (by hardware I mean physical stuff, like materials etc.).
- snrji 8y ago
  Hardware development was accelerated by games, too.
  - kortilla 8y ago
    And software accelerated by the military (tcp/ip).
    - wiz21c 8y ago
      Now with drones, I think the military are accelerated by video games.
    - singularity2001 8y ago
      With a pathetic ROI: Had these trillions been invested in academia or startups, the world would surely be much further.
      - syntaxing 8y ago
        Not sure if I entirely agree with this. A lot of the luxuries we have now were enhanced for the military. For instance, airplanes (aileron and jet turbine development), internet, semiconductor, and even PCBs (or mores specifically, the predecessor Hybrids ICs). A good amount of grants actually come from the Navy and Army for research grants in the academia. Though I did go to grad school for Mech Eng so we probably saw more grants from the military because of that.
        bluGill 8y ago
        That is a logical fallacy. Sure a lot of things happened because of the military, but what didn't happen because we were busy on the military things. There is no way to know. If we had spent as much on genetic research as we did on the moon landing we could have had fire breathing dragons. Think of all the spin offs from that that we are just starting to see now, we could have had them sooner.
        kemiller 8y ago
        It’s true that military necessity has spurred a lot of things, but it sure would be nice if we had the same cultural agreement around basic research without that.
- tomcam 8y ago
  Why downvotes?
syntaxing 8y ago
This is super cool, especially how it is done as a side project. It's resourceful using a game as the physics simulator. I wonder how it compares to Microsoft's [1] and Udacity's [2] implementation. [1]https://github.com/Microsoft/AirSim https://github.com/Microsoft/AirSim [2] https://github.com/udacity/self-driving-car-sim https://github.com/udacity/self-driving-car-sim
- ude22 8y ago
  Thanks for the links! Really cool. Know of any open source Kerbel Space Program type sim?
  - syntaxing 8y ago
    Not as fancy as the other ones but Nasa has a toolbox called trick[1]. This is completely numerical based and allows you to do all the necessary numerical calculations easily. [1] https://github.com/nasa/trick https://github.com/nasa/trick
- vojtamolda 8y ago
  I think a fair comparison would be to AirSim [1] and Carla [3]. These are much more mature projects and are similar to Autodrome in a lot of ways. As far as I know Udacity's simulator is done their class and it's not being actively developed. + Both [1] and [3] have much fewer assets (like 3D models of houses, factories, bridges, cars, trucks, and so on) you'd have to buy them on the Unreal/Unity model marketplace and it still wouldn't be enough. Autodrome can take advantage of almost entire Europe and a third of USA at 1:20 scale. + Autodrome has a sparse map representation that is really easy to randomly fuzz. I.e. it's easy to shift a segment of the road a little bit and see how the algorithm would react to the fuzzed scenario. I believe this is only way how to achieve robust agents and effectively prevent testing on the training set. - Biggest disadvantage of Autodrome is a lack of access to in-game dynamic NPCs (like other trucks, cars or pedestrians). As far as I know there's no API for this. Without help (or a lot of very fragile memory hacking) from the developers of the game this feature is very hard to achieve and both [1] and [3] already have it. [3] http://carla.org http://carla.org PS: Keep in mind that I'm the developer of Autodrome so I my objectivity is very questionable.
CSL144 8y ago
Nice! This looks really cool. Look forward to see how this develops.
carapace 8y ago
(Can we call them "auto-autos"? Please?)

62 points by vojtamolda 8y ago

Nice project! I will keep following your progress. Would you mind if at some point I share your project at https://weeklyrobotics.com https://weeklyrobotics.com ?

vojtamolda 8y ago
Not at all!

olafduckmark 8y ago

I love how this is based on a game. One might argue that software development was really accelerated by games just as the hardware development was accelerated by the military (by hardware I mean physical stuff, like materials etc.).

snrji 8y ago
Hardware development was accelerated by games, too.
- kortilla 8y ago
  And software accelerated by the military (tcp/ip).
  - wiz21c 8y ago
    Now with drones, I think the military are accelerated by video games.
  - singularity2001 8y ago
    With a pathetic ROI: Had these trillions been invested in academia or startups, the world would surely be much further.
    - syntaxing 8y ago
      Not sure if I entirely agree with this. A lot of the luxuries we have now were enhanced for the military. For instance, airplanes (aileron and jet turbine development), internet, semiconductor, and even PCBs (or mores specifically, the predecessor Hybrids ICs). A good amount of grants actually come from the Navy and Army for research grants in the academia. Though I did go to grad school for Mech Eng so we probably saw more grants from the military because of that.
      - bluGill 8y ago
        That is a logical fallacy. Sure a lot of things happened because of the military, but what didn't happen because we were busy on the military things. There is no way to know. If we had spent as much on genetic research as we did on the moon landing we could have had fire breathing dragons. Think of all the spin offs from that that we are just starting to see now, we could have had them sooner.
      - kemiller 8y ago
        It’s true that military necessity has spurred a lot of things, but it sure would be nice if we had the same cultural agreement around basic research without that.
tomcam 8y ago
Why downvotes?

syntaxing 8y ago

This is super cool, especially how it is done as a side project. It's resourceful using a game as the physics simulator. I wonder how it compares to Microsoft's [1] and Udacity's [2] implementation. [1]https://github.com/Microsoft/AirSim https://github.com/Microsoft/AirSim [2] https://github.com/udacity/self-driving-car-sim https://github.com/udacity/self-driving-car-sim

ude22 8y ago
Thanks for the links! Really cool. Know of any open source Kerbel Space Program type sim?
- syntaxing 8y ago
  Not as fancy as the other ones but Nasa has a toolbox called trick[1]. This is completely numerical based and allows you to do all the necessary numerical calculations easily. [1] https://github.com/nasa/trick https://github.com/nasa/trick
vojtamolda 8y ago
I think a fair comparison would be to AirSim [1] and Carla [3]. These are much more mature projects and are similar to Autodrome in a lot of ways. As far as I know Udacity's simulator is done their class and it's not being actively developed. + Both [1] and [3] have much fewer assets (like 3D models of houses, factories, bridges, cars, trucks, and so on) you'd have to buy them on the Unreal/Unity model marketplace and it still wouldn't be enough. Autodrome can take advantage of almost entire Europe and a third of USA at 1:20 scale. + Autodrome has a sparse map representation that is really easy to randomly fuzz. I.e. it's easy to shift a segment of the road a little bit and see how the algorithm would react to the fuzzed scenario. I believe this is only way how to achieve robust agents and effectively prevent testing on the training set. - Biggest disadvantage of Autodrome is a lack of access to in-game dynamic NPCs (like other trucks, cars or pedestrians). As far as I know there's no API for this. Without help (or a lot of very fragile memory hacking) from the developers of the game this feature is very hard to achieve and both [1] and [3] already have it. [3] http://carla.org http://carla.org PS: Keep in mind that I'm the developer of Autodrome so I my objectivity is very questionable.

CSL144 8y ago

Nice! This looks really cool. Look forward to see how this develops.

carapace 8y ago

(Can we call them "auto-autos"? Please?)