13 ms·

Comma Three Devkit

95 points by roborovskis 5y ago

yewenjie 5y ago
AFAIK Comma.ai is the only open-source company in the self-driving cars space. It is very interesting that they are continuously launching consumer-products with a small team and in a highly competitive space where the other players are quite big.
- alpaca128 5y ago
  They have a more focused approach that simplifies it a lot. Where others build whole self-driving cars Comma uses existing interfaces and sensors in the vehicle. That's far less complexity to worry about.
- stefan_ 5y ago
  This does not in any shape or form compete in the self-driving cars space; the thing doesn't have a rear camera! This is basically the "rsync as Dropbox" approach to augmenting your car with a hacky version of automatic cruise control, with a bonus lawsuit should you ever be in a crash significant enough to warrant the attention (think paralysis).
  - mgraczyk 5y ago
    If you haven't tried it, I would refrain from making that claim. I used the v1 of this device for ~1 year, and since then driving has never felt the same. It was sooo much less annoying to do regular commutes when the device took control for even 90% of the trip. This was true even though I still paid attention to the road and had hands ready to take the wheel.
    - kelnos 5y ago
      Sure, but your experience doesn't really tell us about the overall safety of the system. How many total miles have been driven by people using a Comma system? The front page of their website says "millions", which is several orders of magnitude less than Tesla Autopilot (several billion miles at this point). Given that in the US there is around 1 fatality per 100 million miles driven, I don't think "millions" of miles driven with Comma is anywhere near enough to say anything about its safety record.
  - birken 5y ago
    Comma is far and away the best version of "automatic cruise control" that exists in any consumer car. If you think Comma is hacky then wait until you see Tesla's version, which costs $10k and only works on one brand of car! The stock "automatic cruise control" is most cars is far worse and far more dangerous than Comma, and those companies aren't getting taken down by lawsuits. At the end of the day, the driver is responsible for the operation of the vehicle. Comma is a tool the driver can use, and one that undoubtedly makes driving safer for themselves and other vehicles on the road.
    - varelse 5y ago
      Um... Have you driven a Mach E yet? No interest in its upcoming FSD, but the adaptive cruise control and lane assistance is wonderfully conservative and useful.
      - birken 5y ago
        I've only driven my car, but Consumer Reports tested a bunch of cars and rated Comma the best [1]. Maybe another car since then is better, but of course Comma is always getting updated and you just download the new version to your device when it comes out. 1: https://data.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/consumer-reports-active-driving-assistance-systems-november-16-2020.pdf https://data.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/...
        varelse 5y ago
        After reading a description of the comma device and how it's being used it seems uncannily like how my Mach E drives. But also as both my first EV and my first semi self-driving car, perhaps I have a different set of standards. My TLDR was that the adaptive cruise control and automatic lane keeping extended my daily driving range by several hundred miles by reducing cognitive load significantly. It was the best 900 miles I've ever driven. But watching people nitpick various variants of electric crossover SUVs, I realize I would probably like just about all of them because none of my cars have been anything like that up to now. So I keyed in my other two cars to see if I could put the comma into it and alas I cannot. They are 2013 and 2016 models respectively. And yes the system in the Mach E is brand new: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a32896537/fords-driver-assist-system-drivers-hands-free/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a32896537/fords-driver-ass...
  - bobsomers 5y ago
    I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. This is an accurate, if colorful, assessment. It has all the same safety problems as a Tesla with even worse sensors, less compute, and practically zero real safety V&V work. They cutely dodged NHTSA's regulatory ire by shipping a "dash cam" that happens to run software you can install which makes it semi-autonomous... even though said software is made by the same company that ships the "dash cam". NHTSA isn't stupid, so I'm curious what it will take for this loophole to eventually be properly closed. Sadly, safety is a lot like security. When it's done well, it's invisible, but when it's done poorly...
- kyle_martin1 5y ago
  Not actually open source. The source code that’s available is a thin wrapper around a closed-source ML model. If George really cared about Open Source he would release the training architecture and training data.
  - mgraczyk 5y ago
    As somebody who works with video and photo user data for machine learning, I'd say they are much better off not releasing the majority of their data. Unfortunately there are fairly severe legal consequences for commercial use of certain kinds of unconsented user data in various US states (consent of the people filmed, not the people collecting the data), and even companies in complete compliance have to deal with a huge potential legal headache to prove that their datasets follow every local regulation.
    - kyle_martin1 5y ago
      I agree with you but...you're also not claiming you're project/product is open source.
johnkg 5y ago
Comma claimed today: $8.1M raised, $9M revenue, 5000+ comma twos sold, 3500+ active users. Pretty cool for a open source company.
- geoah 5y ago
  Need to watch the presentation still but I’d be more interested in how many km/miles it has collectively driven.
  - MattRix 5y ago
    They said it has been used for over 50 million miles so far, and that there are over 100k minutes of driving being done with it per day.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  “Open source” is a difficult term regarding machine learning companies. Their sauce is the model and not much about that is open.
valgaze 5y ago
"The comma three devkit does not ship with any software. Once you have the device you will be able to install any software you choose at your own risk."
- bitwidget 5y ago
  Makes sense, if they shipped with the software already preinstalled, it would mean that they open themselves up to liability and other legal issues. So they don't have it installed as it's pretty easy to download and install from their Github
  - bertil 5y ago
    I’m generally not a fan of that kind of fig-leaf (say “we are not sharing weapons, just information” when encouraging people to print a gun-shaped bobby trap that is more likely to blow your hand than change anyone’s mind about gun control) but in this case, the veneer of technical engagement seems to filter for, or encourage people who are excited enough by self-driving that they actually pay attention and send feedback.
    - robbedpeter 5y ago
      It's very likely a deliberate and precise execution of the legal requirements to shield themselves from legal liability, under the advice of lawyers. At each step, from the coding to the hardware development to installation and configuration the responsibility is clear. The installer of both hardware and software ends up being responsible for the use of the system in a way that is much more legally clear than other automation systems or even consumer software. Deliberate and informed choices are made by entities completely outside the plausible influence of developers. It could get tricky in cases where the installer is not the end user.
      - bertil 5y ago
        > deliberate and precise execution of the legal requirements I really want to agree with you, all evidence says you are right — but then I see any 30 seconds of geohot, speaking a mile a minute and saying about 40 things that would give any lawyer a heart attack, assertively antagonising _everyone_ and piling on the least politically correct way of seeing things. Either he’s the Top-Gun of walking the fine legal line, or he’s incredibly lucky. Inexplicably, lucky seems more likely.
evanescent 5y ago
Has anyone here tried using one of these? On the surface they seem to be relatively reliable and safe. I am tempted to get try one out since their driver cam gives me confidence that I won't become complacent while using one of these self-driving systems.
- sjburt 5y ago
  I have a Comma Two and have driven maybe 4000 miles on it around the SF Bay area. It is somewhat limited in that they can only steer as hard as the car's lanekeeping system is willing to steer. The driver monitoring helps although I am middle aged and pretty careful anyway so it's only actually beeped at me on a handful of occasions. Honestly, it is not the type of device where you want to take your eyes off the road, I think the DM is actually a little more lenient than it should be. In generally, you are basically as alert as if you are driving. The advantage is that you aren't spending mental energy keeping the car centered in the lane or maintaining a good following distance, or straining your arms holding onto a steering wheel. Long car trips are much more comfortable and less as a result. It's not very useful on city streets or curvy mountain roads, the places where it shines are freeways and stop and go traffic -- the boring driving. It has been quite reliable, most of the kinks have been worked out and they have enough users that there are not any serious bugs on the standard releases. I have reported minor bugs and had them fixed in a matter of days, which is always amazing for an OSS project. If you have an uncommon car there can be tuning issues from time to time. There is also a fairly strong user community on Discord that can help you troubleshoot things. It works best on Toyotas and Hyundais, Honda and Subarus are a little worse, and the other manufacturers is really hit or miss--there may be individual models where someone got it working. It is not a consumer product, you need to be somewhat capable of troubleshooting the occasional issue, reading documentation, dealing with occasional quirks etc.
  - birken 5y ago
    Installation is not consumer friendly (though I'm sure any auto shop would happily install it), but functionality certainly is. My wife who is not particularly tech savvy has no problem using Comma. I have a car that isn't even the best for Comma because of steering limits (Honda CRV), and on road trips I've been able to not touch the steering wheel or accelerator/brake for 30+ minutes on open stretches of the 101. You'd think it doesn't matter all that much, but it saves so much energy. A 4 hour drive feels like a 1 hour drive. Monitoring that the car is driving sensibly uses far less energy than actually driving. And as you say, in bumper to bumper traffic it is just amazing. I was in a 2.5 (!) hour backup between LA and San Diego a few weeks ago and Comma did 99% of the driving. And the only times I had to take over were when other frustrated drivers were doing insane things out of boredom or anger that endangered me. Computers don't get frustrated or angry! The aggravation saved on that one trip paid for the cost.
jalino23 5y ago
huge fan of the CEO. inspired me to use vim 7 months ago and it increased my productivity
- lostmsu 5y ago
  In the one I saw he spent 5 minutes (of 30) figuring out a mistake caused by a simple typo, that a regular IDE would wiggle for him the second after he typed it in.
  - Karsteski 5y ago
    Is there a significant number of people who use vim without any sort of syntax highlighting and linting? I'm still a newb programmer but I started trying to learn neovim this weekend, I can't imagine using it plain...
  - haliskerbas 5y ago
    I personally use Vi(m?) mode in a JetBrains IDE and I consider it to be the best of both worlds.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  Same. His rap skills are hard to forget. https://youtu.be/9iUvuaChDEg https://youtu.be/9iUvuaChDEg
faebi 5y ago
Dave Lee recently had an interesting interview with George Hotz about self-driving cars and the future of AI: https://youtu.be/q6iagfjs83U https://youtu.be/q6iagfjs83U
- pmcollins 5y ago
  awesome video, thank you. btw if anyone’s wondering what they’re talking about regarding end-to-end, this article explains it: https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/deep-learning-self-driving-cars/ https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/deep-learning-self-driving...
mgraczyk 5y ago
Hi George, is this one finally doing stereo depth?
ipsum2 5y ago
> It has dual cam 360° vision From what I can tell, it doesn't have 360 vision of your car, but only the front and back of the device.
treelovinhippie 5y ago
For those new to the comma.ai strategy: Autopilot is iOS. Openpilot is Android. Far more devices running Android than iOS in the world. And unlike consumer tech, the average car on the road is over 12 years old. So there's a long window of opportunity where we might see more people choose to upgrade their current vehicles to self-driving, versus those choosing to buy new vehicles with inbuilt self-driving hardware.
- kelnos 5y ago
  I think a big barrier to adoption here is that your Android phone most likely won't kill you if it has a bad bug[0]. Comma almost certainly won't get widespread adoption until it has enough miles driven on it (at least a billion?) for people to have enough data to start talking about its safety record. So that means it'll be stuck in the realm of enthusiasts for quite a long time. If it does prove itself, though, I agree with you that it could be a game-changer for people who have recent enough cars to be supported, but not have their own driver-assist systems. And that's probably a lot of cars, and a lot of people. [0] Although, with the exploding batteries debacle...
  - treelovinhippie 5y ago
    Yeah definitely. Though the timeframe is in the 10-30 year range. Safe bet that 10 years from now most vehicles on the road will still be human-driven. Openpilot with 10 more years of development will be impressive.
  - DesolationJones 5y ago
    No OEM tests their ADAS for a billion miles before release. It's a level 2 system that requires human attention, not a 100% self driving level 5 system. Ford claims they'll release their new adas, Blue Cruise, when they reach 500,000 miles of testing. (doubt it was that much for their current co-pilot 360) Openpilot so far has 50 million miles. I think safety has already been proven, and I don't think that's preventing widespread adoption at all. It's not like most people even know about this product. It's currently being purposely kept down-low in order to only attract a certain type of tech savvy person who is more likely contribute to the project in some way (pull requests, bug reports) or at a type of person who at least won't need heavy hand holding. A large mainstream consumer audience for a dev kit is too much for them to handle, and would just be a distraction.
woodruffw 5y ago
I'm not anywhere near a specialist when it comes to car software, CAN, or self-driving, but I'm concerned by some of the code that (appears to) control some of the supported cars: I pulled up a random file[1], and it's littered with undocumented bytestrings that are apparently sent over the CAN bus, as magic constants (with accompanying comments that mention "aggressive" and "laggy" behavior). I have no insight into any of the proprietary work in this space, so I have no idea whether this is unique or commonplace. But it certainly isn't confidence inspiring, particularly as a cyclist. [1]: https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/de0ce142ae51cf9c858fa64e35a59e88ca1596d3/selfdrive/car/ford/carcontroller.py https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/de0ce142ae51cf9c85...
- pd0wm 5y ago
  The file you referenced is related to Ford, which is not a supported car/brand. The code for Ford is provided as a reference and is forced into “read-only” both by openpilot and panda (the bridge between openpilot and the car).
- kelnos 5y ago
  On one hand I agree with you wholeheartedly (I also think python is a weird language choice for something that probably has some hard real-time requirements), but also consider that stuff like that may very well be present in the code bases of the closed-source commercial solutions, but unless someone who has worked on one of them speaks up, we'll never know.
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    Yeah, that's why I couched my critique a little bit: I have no insight whatsoever into the commercial side of this and, for all I know, it could be even worse! But that alone is bloodchilling: it terrifies me, as a pedestrian and cyclist, to think that stuff like this is probably controlling the pieces of machinery that could kill me in a split second.
    - sjburt 5y ago
      In their system, the actual real-time safety critical code is elsewhere, on a dedicated processor. The python code sends messages to the safety code, which applies limits and sends commands to the car hardware. And other safety systems like AEB are totally untouched and still functional. The safety code has a limit on steering ramp rate and a max torque limit. The driver can easily overpower the torque limit, and the ramp rate limit means it won't suddenly jerk. The python code I think is temporary, they ultimately want to do end-to-end models that do both perception and control (rather than a model to do perception and traditional controller to do control). If that effort fails I think they would probably replace the python code, the current stuff is definitely amateurish.

95 points by roborovskis 5y ago

AFAIK Comma.ai is the only open-source company in the self-driving cars space. It is very interesting that they are continuously launching consumer-products with a small team and in a highly competitive space where the other players are quite big.

alpaca128 5y ago
They have a more focused approach that simplifies it a lot. Where others build whole self-driving cars Comma uses existing interfaces and sensors in the vehicle. That's far less complexity to worry about.
stefan_ 5y ago
This does not in any shape or form compete in the self-driving cars space; the thing doesn't have a rear camera! This is basically the "rsync as Dropbox" approach to augmenting your car with a hacky version of automatic cruise control, with a bonus lawsuit should you ever be in a crash significant enough to warrant the attention (think paralysis).
- mgraczyk 5y ago
  If you haven't tried it, I would refrain from making that claim. I used the v1 of this device for ~1 year, and since then driving has never felt the same. It was sooo much less annoying to do regular commutes when the device took control for even 90% of the trip. This was true even though I still paid attention to the road and had hands ready to take the wheel.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    Sure, but your experience doesn't really tell us about the overall safety of the system. How many total miles have been driven by people using a Comma system? The front page of their website says "millions", which is several orders of magnitude less than Tesla Autopilot (several billion miles at this point). Given that in the US there is around 1 fatality per 100 million miles driven, I don't think "millions" of miles driven with Comma is anywhere near enough to say anything about its safety record.
- birken 5y ago
  Comma is far and away the best version of "automatic cruise control" that exists in any consumer car. If you think Comma is hacky then wait until you see Tesla's version, which costs $10k and only works on one brand of car! The stock "automatic cruise control" is most cars is far worse and far more dangerous than Comma, and those companies aren't getting taken down by lawsuits. At the end of the day, the driver is responsible for the operation of the vehicle. Comma is a tool the driver can use, and one that undoubtedly makes driving safer for themselves and other vehicles on the road.
  - varelse 5y ago
    Um... Have you driven a Mach E yet? No interest in its upcoming FSD, but the adaptive cruise control and lane assistance is wonderfully conservative and useful.
    - birken 5y ago
      I've only driven my car, but Consumer Reports tested a bunch of cars and rated Comma the best [1]. Maybe another car since then is better, but of course Comma is always getting updated and you just download the new version to your device when it comes out. 1: https://data.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/consumer-reports-active-driving-assistance-systems-november-16-2020.pdf https://data.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/...
      - varelse 5y ago
        After reading a description of the comma device and how it's being used it seems uncannily like how my Mach E drives. But also as both my first EV and my first semi self-driving car, perhaps I have a different set of standards. My TLDR was that the adaptive cruise control and automatic lane keeping extended my daily driving range by several hundred miles by reducing cognitive load significantly. It was the best 900 miles I've ever driven. But watching people nitpick various variants of electric crossover SUVs, I realize I would probably like just about all of them because none of my cars have been anything like that up to now. So I keyed in my other two cars to see if I could put the comma into it and alas I cannot. They are 2013 and 2016 models respectively. And yes the system in the Mach E is brand new: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a32896537/fords-driver-assist-system-drivers-hands-free/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a32896537/fords-driver-ass...
- bobsomers 5y ago
  I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. This is an accurate, if colorful, assessment. It has all the same safety problems as a Tesla with even worse sensors, less compute, and practically zero real safety V&V work. They cutely dodged NHTSA's regulatory ire by shipping a "dash cam" that happens to run software you can install which makes it semi-autonomous... even though said software is made by the same company that ships the "dash cam". NHTSA isn't stupid, so I'm curious what it will take for this loophole to eventually be properly closed. Sadly, safety is a lot like security. When it's done well, it's invisible, but when it's done poorly...
kyle_martin1 5y ago
Not actually open source. The source code that’s available is a thin wrapper around a closed-source ML model. If George really cared about Open Source he would release the training architecture and training data.
- mgraczyk 5y ago
  As somebody who works with video and photo user data for machine learning, I'd say they are much better off not releasing the majority of their data. Unfortunately there are fairly severe legal consequences for commercial use of certain kinds of unconsented user data in various US states (consent of the people filmed, not the people collecting the data), and even companies in complete compliance have to deal with a huge potential legal headache to prove that their datasets follow every local regulation.
  - kyle_martin1 5y ago
    I agree with you but...you're also not claiming you're project/product is open source.

johnkg 5y ago

Comma claimed today: $8.1M raised, $9M revenue, 5000+ comma twos sold, 3500+ active users. Pretty cool for a open source company.

geoah 5y ago
Need to watch the presentation still but I’d be more interested in how many km/miles it has collectively driven.
- MattRix 5y ago
  They said it has been used for over 50 million miles so far, and that there are over 100k minutes of driving being done with it per day.
solarkraft 5y ago
“Open source” is a difficult term regarding machine learning companies. Their sauce is the model and not much about that is open.

valgaze 5y ago

"The comma three devkit does not ship with any software. Once you have the device you will be able to install any software you choose at your own risk."

bitwidget 5y ago
Makes sense, if they shipped with the software already preinstalled, it would mean that they open themselves up to liability and other legal issues. So they don't have it installed as it's pretty easy to download and install from their Github
- bertil 5y ago
  I’m generally not a fan of that kind of fig-leaf (say “we are not sharing weapons, just information” when encouraging people to print a gun-shaped bobby trap that is more likely to blow your hand than change anyone’s mind about gun control) but in this case, the veneer of technical engagement seems to filter for, or encourage people who are excited enough by self-driving that they actually pay attention and send feedback.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    It's very likely a deliberate and precise execution of the legal requirements to shield themselves from legal liability, under the advice of lawyers. At each step, from the coding to the hardware development to installation and configuration the responsibility is clear. The installer of both hardware and software ends up being responsible for the use of the system in a way that is much more legally clear than other automation systems or even consumer software. Deliberate and informed choices are made by entities completely outside the plausible influence of developers. It could get tricky in cases where the installer is not the end user.
    - bertil 5y ago
      > deliberate and precise execution of the legal requirements I really want to agree with you, all evidence says you are right — but then I see any 30 seconds of geohot, speaking a mile a minute and saying about 40 things that would give any lawyer a heart attack, assertively antagonising _everyone_ and piling on the least politically correct way of seeing things. Either he’s the Top-Gun of walking the fine legal line, or he’s incredibly lucky. Inexplicably, lucky seems more likely.

evanescent 5y ago

Has anyone here tried using one of these? On the surface they seem to be relatively reliable and safe. I am tempted to get try one out since their driver cam gives me confidence that I won't become complacent while using one of these self-driving systems.

sjburt 5y ago
I have a Comma Two and have driven maybe 4000 miles on it around the SF Bay area. It is somewhat limited in that they can only steer as hard as the car's lanekeeping system is willing to steer. The driver monitoring helps although I am middle aged and pretty careful anyway so it's only actually beeped at me on a handful of occasions. Honestly, it is not the type of device where you want to take your eyes off the road, I think the DM is actually a little more lenient than it should be. In generally, you are basically as alert as if you are driving. The advantage is that you aren't spending mental energy keeping the car centered in the lane or maintaining a good following distance, or straining your arms holding onto a steering wheel. Long car trips are much more comfortable and less as a result. It's not very useful on city streets or curvy mountain roads, the places where it shines are freeways and stop and go traffic -- the boring driving. It has been quite reliable, most of the kinks have been worked out and they have enough users that there are not any serious bugs on the standard releases. I have reported minor bugs and had them fixed in a matter of days, which is always amazing for an OSS project. If you have an uncommon car there can be tuning issues from time to time. There is also a fairly strong user community on Discord that can help you troubleshoot things. It works best on Toyotas and Hyundais, Honda and Subarus are a little worse, and the other manufacturers is really hit or miss--there may be individual models where someone got it working. It is not a consumer product, you need to be somewhat capable of troubleshooting the occasional issue, reading documentation, dealing with occasional quirks etc.
- birken 5y ago
  Installation is not consumer friendly (though I'm sure any auto shop would happily install it), but functionality certainly is. My wife who is not particularly tech savvy has no problem using Comma. I have a car that isn't even the best for Comma because of steering limits (Honda CRV), and on road trips I've been able to not touch the steering wheel or accelerator/brake for 30+ minutes on open stretches of the 101. You'd think it doesn't matter all that much, but it saves so much energy. A 4 hour drive feels like a 1 hour drive. Monitoring that the car is driving sensibly uses far less energy than actually driving. And as you say, in bumper to bumper traffic it is just amazing. I was in a 2.5 (!) hour backup between LA and San Diego a few weeks ago and Comma did 99% of the driving. And the only times I had to take over were when other frustrated drivers were doing insane things out of boredom or anger that endangered me. Computers don't get frustrated or angry! The aggravation saved on that one trip paid for the cost.

jalino23 5y ago

huge fan of the CEO. inspired me to use vim 7 months ago and it increased my productivity

lostmsu 5y ago
In the one I saw he spent 5 minutes (of 30) figuring out a mistake caused by a simple typo, that a regular IDE would wiggle for him the second after he typed it in.
- Karsteski 5y ago
  Is there a significant number of people who use vim without any sort of syntax highlighting and linting? I'm still a newb programmer but I started trying to learn neovim this weekend, I can't imagine using it plain...
- haliskerbas 5y ago
  I personally use Vi(m?) mode in a JetBrains IDE and I consider it to be the best of both worlds.
solarkraft 5y ago
Same. His rap skills are hard to forget. https://youtu.be/9iUvuaChDEg https://youtu.be/9iUvuaChDEg

faebi 5y ago

Dave Lee recently had an interesting interview with George Hotz about self-driving cars and the future of AI: https://youtu.be/q6iagfjs83U https://youtu.be/q6iagfjs83U

pmcollins 5y ago
awesome video, thank you. btw if anyone’s wondering what they’re talking about regarding end-to-end, this article explains it: https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/deep-learning-self-driving-cars/ https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/deep-learning-self-driving...

mgraczyk 5y ago

Hi George, is this one finally doing stereo depth?

ipsum2 5y ago

> It has dual cam 360° vision From what I can tell, it doesn't have 360 vision of your car, but only the front and back of the device.

treelovinhippie 5y ago

For those new to the comma.ai strategy: Autopilot is iOS. Openpilot is Android. Far more devices running Android than iOS in the world. And unlike consumer tech, the average car on the road is over 12 years old. So there's a long window of opportunity where we might see more people choose to upgrade their current vehicles to self-driving, versus those choosing to buy new vehicles with inbuilt self-driving hardware.

kelnos 5y ago
I think a big barrier to adoption here is that your Android phone most likely won't kill you if it has a bad bug[0]. Comma almost certainly won't get widespread adoption until it has enough miles driven on it (at least a billion?) for people to have enough data to start talking about its safety record. So that means it'll be stuck in the realm of enthusiasts for quite a long time. If it does prove itself, though, I agree with you that it could be a game-changer for people who have recent enough cars to be supported, but not have their own driver-assist systems. And that's probably a lot of cars, and a lot of people. [0] Although, with the exploding batteries debacle...
- treelovinhippie 5y ago
  Yeah definitely. Though the timeframe is in the 10-30 year range. Safe bet that 10 years from now most vehicles on the road will still be human-driven. Openpilot with 10 more years of development will be impressive.
- DesolationJones 5y ago
  No OEM tests their ADAS for a billion miles before release. It's a level 2 system that requires human attention, not a 100% self driving level 5 system. Ford claims they'll release their new adas, Blue Cruise, when they reach 500,000 miles of testing. (doubt it was that much for their current co-pilot 360) Openpilot so far has 50 million miles. I think safety has already been proven, and I don't think that's preventing widespread adoption at all. It's not like most people even know about this product. It's currently being purposely kept down-low in order to only attract a certain type of tech savvy person who is more likely contribute to the project in some way (pull requests, bug reports) or at a type of person who at least won't need heavy hand holding. A large mainstream consumer audience for a dev kit is too much for them to handle, and would just be a distraction.

woodruffw 5y ago

I'm not anywhere near a specialist when it comes to car software, CAN, or self-driving, but I'm concerned by some of the code that (appears to) control some of the supported cars: I pulled up a random file[1], and it's littered with undocumented bytestrings that are apparently sent over the CAN bus, as magic constants (with accompanying comments that mention "aggressive" and "laggy" behavior). I have no insight into any of the proprietary work in this space, so I have no idea whether this is unique or commonplace. But it certainly isn't confidence inspiring, particularly as a cyclist. [1]: https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/de0ce142ae51cf9c858fa64e35a59e88ca1596d3/selfdrive/car/ford/carcontroller.py https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/de0ce142ae51cf9c85...

pd0wm 5y ago
The file you referenced is related to Ford, which is not a supported car/brand. The code for Ford is provided as a reference and is forced into “read-only” both by openpilot and panda (the bridge between openpilot and the car).
kelnos 5y ago
On one hand I agree with you wholeheartedly (I also think python is a weird language choice for something that probably has some hard real-time requirements), but also consider that stuff like that may very well be present in the code bases of the closed-source commercial solutions, but unless someone who has worked on one of them speaks up, we'll never know.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  Yeah, that's why I couched my critique a little bit: I have no insight whatsoever into the commercial side of this and, for all I know, it could be even worse! But that alone is bloodchilling: it terrifies me, as a pedestrian and cyclist, to think that stuff like this is probably controlling the pieces of machinery that could kill me in a split second.
  - sjburt 5y ago
    In their system, the actual real-time safety critical code is elsewhere, on a dedicated processor. The python code sends messages to the safety code, which applies limits and sends commands to the car hardware. And other safety systems like AEB are totally untouched and still functional. The safety code has a limit on steering ramp rate and a max torque limit. The driver can easily overpower the torque limit, and the ramp rate limit means it won't suddenly jerk. The python code I think is temporary, they ultimately want to do end-to-end models that do both perception and control (rather than a model to do perception and traditional controller to do control). If that effort fails I think they would probably replace the python code, the current stuff is definitely amateurish.