8 ms·

Openpilot – Operating system for robotics

241 points by punnerud 2y ago

colesantiago 2y ago
I am not surprised that comma is still around. Minimal VC funding, less than 100 employees, not outrageously increasing headcount each month, profitable and sells a product with good margins. Not many startups do this anymore, they are just chasing funding every 3 months using OpenAI’s API, comma has their own models before the AI hype.
- solarkraft 2y ago
  It’s cool to see that it’s possible to innovate sustainably, in a niche. So refreshing to see something stick around rather than become a bubble with a billion dollar valuation that either takes over the world and enshittifies or implodes and takes the product with it. Make business chill. That said: The larger they get, the more regulator attention they’ll attract. If some government entity wanted to, they could probably easily kill them.
  - mdaniel 2y ago
    kill the company, probably, but the source is MIT and there doesn't appear to be any copyright assignment, so no rug pull https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/v0.9.7/LICENSE https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/v0.9.7/LICENSE https://github.com/commaai/panda/blob/32eecd721129b9215030c55a93321769892b3140/LICENSE https://github.com/commaai/panda/blob/32eecd721129b9215030c5...
    - edude03 2y ago
      IIRC the actual model is private and only downloads once you activate the device so presumably if the company was shutdown you couldn’t use the device anymore unless someone shelled out for training
      - mdaniel 2y ago
        Makes sense. Given what I have seen of geohot's personality, I would bet dollars to donuts that he'd post a link to it in such an outcome
      - KTibow 2y ago
        I'm inclined to say the model is open because I've seen PRs that just update the various models
        mdaniel 2y ago
        For those similarly curious, I went sniffing around the PRs and found that, yes, there are two .onnx (via git-lfs) in https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/tree/v0.9.7/selfdrive/modeld/models https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/tree/v0.9.7/selfdrive/m... - one for the forward camera and one for watching the driver. The driver one had a lot more features than I expected, but I'd guess they are related to the NTSB certification I saw mentioned elsewhere in the thread here. Regrettably, because I don't have a Panda-compatible car, I actually can't try out the self-hosting setup but it certainly seems plausible Also, while poking around, I saw they use a "CTF" for on-boarding new contributors, which I thought was neat: https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/v0.9.7/tools/CTF.md https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/v0.9.7/tools/CTF.m...
bks 2y ago
I chose the Hyundai Ioniq 5 as my current car specifically because it’s compatible with OpenPilot. It’s been a total game-changer for my driving experience. Just like their tagline says, “make driving chill,” and for me, it truly delivers on that promise.
- zrt1019 2y ago
  I'm confused: "THIS IS ALPHA QUALITY SOFTWARE FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY. THIS IS NOT A PRODUCT. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR COMPLYING WITH LOCAL LAWS AND REGULATIONS. NO WARRANTY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED." Where can this be used? In a private parking lot?
  - rogerrogerr 2y ago
    The driver takes liability, of course, and this can be used wherever the driver deems it safe and useful.
    - diggan 2y ago
      > this can be used wherever the driver deems it safe and useful With the disclaimer that this depends on the location of course. For example, I think in Spain (and probably EU wide?) modifications that affect steering and throttle control would need to undergo local homologation before you're legally allowed to drive with that on public roads at all. Which, to be honest, makes a lot of sense. I don't think anyone would be happy if cars start using software MVPs automatically controlling throttle and steering while in real traffic.
      - edude03 2y ago
        I mean let’s be frank here. The sort of people who are enthusiastic about this also aren’t going to be stopped by the law especially with the low risk of getting caught.
        diggan 2y ago
drivingmenuts 2y ago
If I was in law enforcement, I’d be rubbing my hands in glee to get ahold of that saved video.
- xipix 2y ago
  I'd be even more gleeful if I was in car insurance. "Openpilot's not covered, your insurance is invalidated."
  - AyyEye 2y ago
    Insurance is a non-issue with openpilot.
    - xipix 2y ago
      Has that been tested in court? In my jurisdiction?
      - AyyEye 2y ago
        Many OP users have asked insurance about it and gotten the a-okay. Believe it or not insurance likes safety devices.
  - renewiltord 2y ago
    Geico will cover you. You can disclose ahead of time that you have an aftermarket ADAS if you want. If it drives you off the road, it will be as if you drove off the road and you will be declared at-fault, of course.
  - punnerud 2y ago
    Most likely not legal to invalidate in EU. There is laws that’s say that ev everything you can do manually, you are allowed to automate. Any rules against that is null and void. The “horse winning race” case is a known one where they go into this.
bilsbie 2y ago
I can’t wrap my head around the fact that 275 car models include all the actuators needed for self driving driving and there’s some kind of port third party software can hook into.
- flessner 2y ago
  I don't know if there's a physical port in most cars, but it uses the CAN bus which has been around since the 1980s. Also, most cars that have distance assist and lane keeping probably have the required hardware to control speed and steering to some extent. Nevertheless, it's still impressive that so many cars are supported... and that it can be retrofitted like this at all!
  - fkyoureadthedoc 2y ago
    They also lie about models that are supported and won't assist you when you run into that. Had to return one myself. Found no evidence anywhere that my model/year was ever actually supported and anyone was using it either.
    - jmacd 2y ago
      Sounds like they refunded you?
      - fkyoureadthedoc 2y ago
        Yeah, that process at least was painless
    - olabyne 2y ago
      Could you say what car ?
      - fkyoureadthedoc 2y ago
        2023 Forte https://www.reddit.com/r/Comma_ai/comments/197k04q/2023_kia_forte_issues/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Comma_ai/comments/197k04q/2023_kia_... https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/issues/30936 https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/issues/30936 You can find a few attempts of people trying to get it to work in their discord with no clear positive outcome, discord is unfortunately not search indexed.
akgrd 2y ago
This seems to be a mix of C++ and Python, including a script called "realtime.py" (oxymoron?). So am I now exposed to other people using Python on the roads to operate heavy machinery?
- KeplerBoy 2y ago
  Is this legal in the US?
- traverseda 2y ago
  Well NIST says don't use C++ either: https://www.nist.gov/itl/ssd/software-quality-group/safer-languages https://www.nist.gov/itl/ssd/software-quality-group/safer-la... So what, you want everything written in RUST on a linux kernel with hard real-time patches? It uses machine vision anyway, which has no hard guarantees at all. The software it uses to detect lanes or cars is probabilistic by it's very nature. Python does pretty good at soft real time if you manage your own event loop and disable the garbage collector, and you're a lot less likely to get "crash the entire stack" style memory allocation bugs. Sure, GO or RUST would be better, I think CPP could be worse if handled inexpertly.
  - tmarkman 2y ago
    Python has segfault issues, surprising exceptions and version incompatibility. I've been using Linux/BSD for over a decade now. No C or C++ application has ever crashed, I cannot say the same about Python applications. Outright segfaults are rare but happen. Rogue exceptions are much more common and could basically have the same detrimental effect on a self-driving system as a segfault. And let's not talk about logic bugs due to version incompatibility and the obsessive rewriting of those who took control over CPython.
    - traverseda 2y ago
      Ahh, you've been running some grad students first python project as if it was a serious project like curl with 20 years of history, and expecting it to have the same quality. But you've somehow avoided the tons of grad-student CPP programs with similar quality issues, or the broken code pushed by companies like crowdstrike or IBM. Fair enough, your experience may vary. I'd suggest not judging the language by the standards of some hobbyist code that just so happened to end up on github. I've had tons of bugs in c/cpp programs over the years, some more critical than others. I've seen a lot of shitty and unreliable python code, and a lot of good and mature C/CPP projects. I've also seen really bad security issues and crashes with bad C code, heartbleed, crowdstrike, etc. For what it's worth I've never had youtube-dl hard crash on me, and I could argue that it's a more complicated problem to solve than what curl is solving. In an apples-to-apples comparison I think it does pretty well. No matter what language you use for this you're going to be relying on an AI vision model with no hard guarantees.
rsp1984 2y ago
Without taking away anything from the substance or achievement of this release, I find phrases like "openpilot is an operating system for robotics." always quite fishy. No, it's not an OS for robotics. You can't do actual robotics stuff with it, like drive actuators to control limbs or grippers, do motion control or SLAM or perception or any of the usual robotics stack. Their website correctly says openpilot is an open source advanced driver assistance system that works on 275+ car models of Toyota, Hyundai, Honda, and many other brands. Should've stuck to that. Thinking about it some more, it's probably just another engagement baiting strategy to get attention and I'm their gullible puppet. Well played.
- metal_am 2y ago
  I definitely thought it was a ROS clone based on that first line.
  - notum 2y ago
    ROS doesn't need a clone, it needs a successor. Took the bait as well.
    - spookie 2y ago
      ROS2? I'll see myself out...
      - failbuffer 2y ago
        Could someone explain the joke? I've been dabbling with learning robotics and I've been confused by how ROS and ROS2 both appear to be actively developed/used. Is ROS2 a slow-moving successor version (like Python 3 was) or a complete fork?
        causal 2y ago
        Slow-moving successor, which the community isn't exactly going wild over. It offers modest improvements in exchange for a painful upgrade process, and many of the original issues with ROS1 remaining unsolved. The other half of the joke is that ROS was never an operating system either.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
twilite 2y ago
[dead]
FullGarden_S 2y ago
for a second, I though this was the ROS alternative I've been forever waiting for smh
kyle_martin1 2y ago
[dead]
torlok 2y ago
I always wondered who would pay $1000 for a device you have to babysit, just so that you can become an unpaid beta tester and data drone for SV millionaires. I guess all you have to do is tell people they're a part of a revolution?
- 392 2y ago
  Or want your car to drive itself. I only drive long distance and my Comma has completely changed how often I visit family and improved my safety coming home from exhausting weekends.
jmacd 2y ago
I have a Dodge Ram. Last night I had a 400km drive to do after a very long day. I wasn't exhausted, but I certainly felt like I did not want to drive an extended period of time. I have a Comma 3x in the truck and felt way more confident, alert and comfortable for the entire drive. OpenPilot/Sunnypilot/Frogpilot are not FSD, but they are hands off driving assistance. The 2020 Ram performs incredibly well. The latest driving models are very smooth as well, no ping-ponging and they handle passing and traffic extremely well. A legacy car maker would be smart to acquire Comma if its for sale. They would be extremely close to a viable assisted driving capability with it.
- pj_mukh 2y ago
  Mind boggling to me that a non-ping pongy lane keeping is not standard in cars. Is it standard in luxury cars? Seems like an obvious thing to add/upsell.
  - hasperdi 2y ago
    Non ping-ponging lane following assist is already available in many cars including KIA and Hyundai models. They're very conservative and disengage very easily. I think it's by design to minimise their legal accountability
    - judge2020 2y ago
      Also Honda. In my Accord 2018 it lane kept but didn’t even play a sound when it lost tracking.
    - kube-system 2y ago
      Not just legal accountability, but actual safety. They are designed so that they do not give the user a false impression of the extent of their capabilities.
    - imp0cat 2y ago
      Hyundai actually has two systems, LKA and LFA. LKA just tries to bounce the car back when it detects lane edges, LFA actively keeps the car in the middle of a lane. All Hyundai models in Europe have LKA, some (more expensive) also have LFS.
guyfromfargo 2y ago
I’m surprised to see so many people disliking Open Pilot on HackerNews. I have one of these, and it’s a total game changer on long trips. I drove from Texas to California using my Comma 3 and I didn’t have to overtake it a single time on the interstate. Sure you have to actively be alert your entire drive, but it’s still significantly better than actually doing the work of driving.
- 1shooner 2y ago
  I've only driven a driver-assist system once and kind of hated it, but I've always assumed that the mental work of remaining attentive as a passive participant would actually be more mentally taxing than just driving. It seems like you're inevitably going to lose attention.
ModernMech 2y ago
I wonder why the website doesn't say "operating system" but instead calls it an "advanced driver assistance system"
siliconc0w 2y ago
Been following Openpilot for awhile, would totally use it if I had a supported car. Though these days most cars come with 'pretty good' ADAS, even 'hands free' in some situations, so I wonder how much it's "worth it" to DIY compared to factory default.
- ranon 2y ago
  I do think that within the next 5-10 years most cars will be able to hands free highway as reliably as OP. However, cars keep getting more and more expensive. One can buy a 2015-2024 used car for much cheaper and get some very good highway cruising out of it. That's what I did and am very happy about it.
sfblah 2y ago
There's an element of using these systems that people don't usually discuss. One of the forks, Sunnypilot, enables a mode where you control the pedals but don't have to do the steering. What I've found is you do pay attention in this mode, and since you're controlling the brakes you can easily avoid most issues that you would get with self driving. But, not having to have your hands on the steering wheel makes the experience a lot more pleasant. Also, with traditional lane keeping systems, the so-called "longitudinal" control (accelerator and brakes) is where in my experience the system makes the most mistakes. I think this mode is something car manufacturers should enable in general. I actually suspect it's significantly safer than completely hands- and feet-free driving modes, and you get most of the benefit of lane-keeping assist.
niteshpant 2y ago
for cars that aren't compatible, can you install additional hardware to make them compatible?
- ranon 2y ago
  Possibly. You can check out retropilot. Of course depending on the car it may be extremely difficult.
  - mdaniel 2y ago
    This one <https://github.com/RetroPilot/retropilot https://github.com/RetroPilot/retropilot> last updated 2 years ago?
pinkmuffinere 2y ago
This is super cool, but: 1. Is this street legal? If so, how? 2. They discuss functional safety, and lots of testing, which is great. But I’d want to see some data on the test results — maybe this exists and I just didn’t see it? 3. It makes me uncomfortable that the anecdotal videos are easily findable, but bulk data/statistics are not. Anecdotes can easily be cherry picked. I get that they’re necessary for marketing, but I don’t feel they’re sufficient given the product’s purpose
- ranon 2y ago
  This is a modern ADAS system, but a lot more stable. The driver is always liable for what their vehicle does. It's not claiming to be FSD and it's very apparent when the system will need additional inputs from the driver. I have 15k miles on it. Was able to retrofit a friend's 2015 car as well with a bit of additional hardware, and he likes it. He also has FSD on a model3. But OP or FSD, driver always has to pay attention and add their inputs.

241 points by punnerud 2y ago

I am not surprised that comma is still around. Minimal VC funding, less than 100 employees, not outrageously increasing headcount each month, profitable and sells a product with good margins. Not many startups do this anymore, they are just chasing funding every 3 months using OpenAI’s API, comma has their own models before the AI hype.

solarkraft 2y ago
It’s cool to see that it’s possible to innovate sustainably, in a niche. So refreshing to see something stick around rather than become a bubble with a billion dollar valuation that either takes over the world and enshittifies or implodes and takes the product with it. Make business chill. That said: The larger they get, the more regulator attention they’ll attract. If some government entity wanted to, they could probably easily kill them.
- mdaniel 2y ago
  kill the company, probably, but the source is MIT and there doesn't appear to be any copyright assignment, so no rug pull https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/v0.9.7/LICENSE https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/v0.9.7/LICENSE https://github.com/commaai/panda/blob/32eecd721129b9215030c55a93321769892b3140/LICENSE https://github.com/commaai/panda/blob/32eecd721129b9215030c5...
  - edude03 2y ago
    IIRC the actual model is private and only downloads once you activate the device so presumably if the company was shutdown you couldn’t use the device anymore unless someone shelled out for training
    - mdaniel 2y ago
      Makes sense. Given what I have seen of geohot's personality, I would bet dollars to donuts that he'd post a link to it in such an outcome
    - KTibow 2y ago
      I'm inclined to say the model is open because I've seen PRs that just update the various models
      - mdaniel 2y ago
        For those similarly curious, I went sniffing around the PRs and found that, yes, there are two .onnx (via git-lfs) in https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/tree/v0.9.7/selfdrive/modeld/models https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/tree/v0.9.7/selfdrive/m... - one for the forward camera and one for watching the driver. The driver one had a lot more features than I expected, but I'd guess they are related to the NTSB certification I saw mentioned elsewhere in the thread here. Regrettably, because I don't have a Panda-compatible car, I actually can't try out the self-hosting setup but it certainly seems plausible Also, while poking around, I saw they use a "CTF" for on-boarding new contributors, which I thought was neat: https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/v0.9.7/tools/CTF.md https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/v0.9.7/tools/CTF.m...

bks 2y ago

I chose the Hyundai Ioniq 5 as my current car specifically because it’s compatible with OpenPilot. It’s been a total game-changer for my driving experience. Just like their tagline says, “make driving chill,” and for me, it truly delivers on that promise.

zrt1019 2y ago
I'm confused: "THIS IS ALPHA QUALITY SOFTWARE FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY. THIS IS NOT A PRODUCT. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR COMPLYING WITH LOCAL LAWS AND REGULATIONS. NO WARRANTY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED." Where can this be used? In a private parking lot?
- rogerrogerr 2y ago
  The driver takes liability, of course, and this can be used wherever the driver deems it safe and useful.
  - diggan 2y ago
    > this can be used wherever the driver deems it safe and useful With the disclaimer that this depends on the location of course. For example, I think in Spain (and probably EU wide?) modifications that affect steering and throttle control would need to undergo local homologation before you're legally allowed to drive with that on public roads at all. Which, to be honest, makes a lot of sense. I don't think anyone would be happy if cars start using software MVPs automatically controlling throttle and steering while in real traffic.
    - edude03 2y ago
      I mean let’s be frank here. The sort of people who are enthusiastic about this also aren’t going to be stopped by the law especially with the low risk of getting caught.
      - diggan 2y ago

drivingmenuts 2y ago

If I was in law enforcement, I’d be rubbing my hands in glee to get ahold of that saved video.

xipix 2y ago
I'd be even more gleeful if I was in car insurance. "Openpilot's not covered, your insurance is invalidated."
- AyyEye 2y ago
  Insurance is a non-issue with openpilot.
  - xipix 2y ago
    Has that been tested in court? In my jurisdiction?
    - AyyEye 2y ago
      Many OP users have asked insurance about it and gotten the a-okay. Believe it or not insurance likes safety devices.
- renewiltord 2y ago
  Geico will cover you. You can disclose ahead of time that you have an aftermarket ADAS if you want. If it drives you off the road, it will be as if you drove off the road and you will be declared at-fault, of course.
- punnerud 2y ago
  Most likely not legal to invalidate in EU. There is laws that’s say that ev everything you can do manually, you are allowed to automate. Any rules against that is null and void. The “horse winning race” case is a known one where they go into this.

bilsbie 2y ago

I can’t wrap my head around the fact that 275 car models include all the actuators needed for self driving driving and there’s some kind of port third party software can hook into.

flessner 2y ago
I don't know if there's a physical port in most cars, but it uses the CAN bus which has been around since the 1980s. Also, most cars that have distance assist and lane keeping probably have the required hardware to control speed and steering to some extent. Nevertheless, it's still impressive that so many cars are supported... and that it can be retrofitted like this at all!
- fkyoureadthedoc 2y ago
  They also lie about models that are supported and won't assist you when you run into that. Had to return one myself. Found no evidence anywhere that my model/year was ever actually supported and anyone was using it either.
  - jmacd 2y ago
    Sounds like they refunded you?
    - fkyoureadthedoc 2y ago
      Yeah, that process at least was painless
  - olabyne 2y ago
    Could you say what car ?
    - fkyoureadthedoc 2y ago
      2023 Forte https://www.reddit.com/r/Comma_ai/comments/197k04q/2023_kia_forte_issues/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Comma_ai/comments/197k04q/2023_kia_... https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/issues/30936 https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/issues/30936 You can find a few attempts of people trying to get it to work in their discord with no clear positive outcome, discord is unfortunately not search indexed.

akgrd 2y ago

This seems to be a mix of C++ and Python, including a script called "realtime.py" (oxymoron?). So am I now exposed to other people using Python on the roads to operate heavy machinery?

KeplerBoy 2y ago
Is this legal in the US?
traverseda 2y ago
Well NIST says don't use C++ either: https://www.nist.gov/itl/ssd/software-quality-group/safer-languages https://www.nist.gov/itl/ssd/software-quality-group/safer-la... So what, you want everything written in RUST on a linux kernel with hard real-time patches? It uses machine vision anyway, which has no hard guarantees at all. The software it uses to detect lanes or cars is probabilistic by it's very nature. Python does pretty good at soft real time if you manage your own event loop and disable the garbage collector, and you're a lot less likely to get "crash the entire stack" style memory allocation bugs. Sure, GO or RUST would be better, I think CPP could be worse if handled inexpertly.
- tmarkman 2y ago
  Python has segfault issues, surprising exceptions and version incompatibility. I've been using Linux/BSD for over a decade now. No C or C++ application has ever crashed, I cannot say the same about Python applications. Outright segfaults are rare but happen. Rogue exceptions are much more common and could basically have the same detrimental effect on a self-driving system as a segfault. And let's not talk about logic bugs due to version incompatibility and the obsessive rewriting of those who took control over CPython.
  - traverseda 2y ago
    Ahh, you've been running some grad students first python project as if it was a serious project like curl with 20 years of history, and expecting it to have the same quality. But you've somehow avoided the tons of grad-student CPP programs with similar quality issues, or the broken code pushed by companies like crowdstrike or IBM. Fair enough, your experience may vary. I'd suggest not judging the language by the standards of some hobbyist code that just so happened to end up on github. I've had tons of bugs in c/cpp programs over the years, some more critical than others. I've seen a lot of shitty and unreliable python code, and a lot of good and mature C/CPP projects. I've also seen really bad security issues and crashes with bad C code, heartbleed, crowdstrike, etc. For what it's worth I've never had youtube-dl hard crash on me, and I could argue that it's a more complicated problem to solve than what curl is solving. In an apples-to-apples comparison I think it does pretty well. No matter what language you use for this you're going to be relying on an AI vision model with no hard guarantees.

rsp1984 2y ago

Without taking away anything from the substance or achievement of this release, I find phrases like "openpilot is an operating system for robotics." always quite fishy. No, it's not an OS for robotics. You can't do actual robotics stuff with it, like drive actuators to control limbs or grippers, do motion control or SLAM or perception or any of the usual robotics stack. Their website correctly says openpilot is an open source advanced driver assistance system that works on 275+ car models of Toyota, Hyundai, Honda, and many other brands. Should've stuck to that. Thinking about it some more, it's probably just another engagement baiting strategy to get attention and I'm their gullible puppet. Well played.

metal_am 2y ago
I definitely thought it was a ROS clone based on that first line.
- notum 2y ago
  ROS doesn't need a clone, it needs a successor. Took the bait as well.
  - spookie 2y ago
    ROS2? I'll see myself out...
    - failbuffer 2y ago
      Could someone explain the joke? I've been dabbling with learning robotics and I've been confused by how ROS and ROS2 both appear to be actively developed/used. Is ROS2 a slow-moving successor version (like Python 3 was) or a complete fork?
      - causal 2y ago
        Slow-moving successor, which the community isn't exactly going wild over. It offers modest improvements in exchange for a painful upgrade process, and many of the original issues with ROS1 remaining unsolved. The other half of the joke is that ROS was never an operating system either.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

twilite 2y ago

[dead]

FullGarden_S 2y ago

for a second, I though this was the ROS alternative I've been forever waiting for smh

kyle_martin1 2y ago

[dead]

torlok 2y ago

I always wondered who would pay $1000 for a device you have to babysit, just so that you can become an unpaid beta tester and data drone for SV millionaires. I guess all you have to do is tell people they're a part of a revolution?

392 2y ago
Or want your car to drive itself. I only drive long distance and my Comma has completely changed how often I visit family and improved my safety coming home from exhausting weekends.

jmacd 2y ago

I have a Dodge Ram. Last night I had a 400km drive to do after a very long day. I wasn't exhausted, but I certainly felt like I did not want to drive an extended period of time. I have a Comma 3x in the truck and felt way more confident, alert and comfortable for the entire drive. OpenPilot/Sunnypilot/Frogpilot are not FSD, but they are hands off driving assistance. The 2020 Ram performs incredibly well. The latest driving models are very smooth as well, no ping-ponging and they handle passing and traffic extremely well. A legacy car maker would be smart to acquire Comma if its for sale. They would be extremely close to a viable assisted driving capability with it.

pj_mukh 2y ago
Mind boggling to me that a non-ping pongy lane keeping is not standard in cars. Is it standard in luxury cars? Seems like an obvious thing to add/upsell.
- hasperdi 2y ago
  Non ping-ponging lane following assist is already available in many cars including KIA and Hyundai models. They're very conservative and disengage very easily. I think it's by design to minimise their legal accountability
  - judge2020 2y ago
    Also Honda. In my Accord 2018 it lane kept but didn’t even play a sound when it lost tracking.
  - kube-system 2y ago
    Not just legal accountability, but actual safety. They are designed so that they do not give the user a false impression of the extent of their capabilities.
  - imp0cat 2y ago
    Hyundai actually has two systems, LKA and LFA. LKA just tries to bounce the car back when it detects lane edges, LFA actively keeps the car in the middle of a lane. All Hyundai models in Europe have LKA, some (more expensive) also have LFS.

guyfromfargo 2y ago

I’m surprised to see so many people disliking Open Pilot on HackerNews. I have one of these, and it’s a total game changer on long trips. I drove from Texas to California using my Comma 3 and I didn’t have to overtake it a single time on the interstate. Sure you have to actively be alert your entire drive, but it’s still significantly better than actually doing the work of driving.

1shooner 2y ago
I've only driven a driver-assist system once and kind of hated it, but I've always assumed that the mental work of remaining attentive as a passive participant would actually be more mentally taxing than just driving. It seems like you're inevitably going to lose attention.

ModernMech 2y ago

I wonder why the website doesn't say "operating system" but instead calls it an "advanced driver assistance system"

siliconc0w 2y ago

Been following Openpilot for awhile, would totally use it if I had a supported car. Though these days most cars come with 'pretty good' ADAS, even 'hands free' in some situations, so I wonder how much it's "worth it" to DIY compared to factory default.

ranon 2y ago
I do think that within the next 5-10 years most cars will be able to hands free highway as reliably as OP. However, cars keep getting more and more expensive. One can buy a 2015-2024 used car for much cheaper and get some very good highway cruising out of it. That's what I did and am very happy about it.

sfblah 2y ago

There's an element of using these systems that people don't usually discuss. One of the forks, Sunnypilot, enables a mode where you control the pedals but don't have to do the steering. What I've found is you do pay attention in this mode, and since you're controlling the brakes you can easily avoid most issues that you would get with self driving. But, not having to have your hands on the steering wheel makes the experience a lot more pleasant. Also, with traditional lane keeping systems, the so-called "longitudinal" control (accelerator and brakes) is where in my experience the system makes the most mistakes. I think this mode is something car manufacturers should enable in general. I actually suspect it's significantly safer than completely hands- and feet-free driving modes, and you get most of the benefit of lane-keeping assist.

niteshpant 2y ago

for cars that aren't compatible, can you install additional hardware to make them compatible?

ranon 2y ago
Possibly. You can check out retropilot. Of course depending on the car it may be extremely difficult.
- mdaniel 2y ago
  This one <https://github.com/RetroPilot/retropilot https://github.com/RetroPilot/retropilot> last updated 2 years ago?

pinkmuffinere 2y ago

This is super cool, but: 1. Is this street legal? If so, how? 2. They discuss functional safety, and lots of testing, which is great. But I’d want to see some data on the test results — maybe this exists and I just didn’t see it? 3. It makes me uncomfortable that the anecdotal videos are easily findable, but bulk data/statistics are not. Anecdotes can easily be cherry picked. I get that they’re necessary for marketing, but I don’t feel they’re sufficient given the product’s purpose

ranon 2y ago
This is a modern ADAS system, but a lot more stable. The driver is always liable for what their vehicle does. It's not claiming to be FSD and it's very apparent when the system will need additional inputs from the driver. I have 15k miles on it. Was able to retrofit a friend's 2015 car as well with a bit of additional hardware, and he likes it. He also has FSD on a model3. But OP or FSD, driver always has to pay attention and add their inputs.