Comment by nashashmi
17 hours ago
> Currently, openpilot performs the functions of Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and Automated Lane Centering (ALC). openpilot can accelerate, brake automatically for other vehicles, and steer to follow the road/lane. [1]
[Some of the] Cars that are currently supported already have "smart cruise" and "lane follow". Why then use a third-party self-driving system?
[1] https://comma.ai/openpilot#:~:text=Currently%2C%20openpilot%...
> My <device> already comes with built in <software> why would I install anything else?
Top voted comment on hacker news btw.
Ok that was probably unnecessarily snarky I hope you don't take offense, but it seems the hacker spirit has been fading more often from this site, we used to replace stuff with inferior versions just to see if we could.
Speaking of hacker spirit... Comma has a lot of restrictions on what software you can load / what changes you can make to the software.
No it doesn't?
You can run stock, or any fork simply by providing the URL of the version you want to run.
Where exactly is the restriction?
What? It's literally open source, you can ssh into the thing and change whatever you want. I am running a fork of a fork of the code right now. I change things all the time.
Unfortunately, a quick google seems to say no one's ported Doom to the Comma hardware just yet!
If geohot is involved, it wouldn't suprise me if it was the first proof of concept for each new hardware variant.
It's infinitely better than HDA2 at tracking and maintaining lanes.
HDA2 cuts out if there is a break in lines more than 50ft or so.
Openpilot can track the slightest of roads, even able to follow off-road the tracks in grass from a leading car.
It does basically everything HDA2 does and then some, and does it much better.
It has a driver-monitoring camera that you control, that monitors for inattentiveness which is much more effective than simple wheel-torque based sensors.
Big one, because all those cars require you to touch and move the steering wheel every X seconds. All the ones that let you go hands free cost a subscription of around $500 a year (Ford BlueCruise, GM SuperCruise). And even those only let you use hands free mode on pre-mapped roads, typically only interstates.
Becasue most cars with lane follow still lose lock on the lane when the lines are hard to see (rains, snow, etc) or missing due to exists and other things.
Becasue most cars with lane follow fail to keep well when the turn gets too sharp.
Comma.ai lets you go completely hands free with no wheel nags. It also works just fine when there are no lane lines or poorly visible lines. It also supports lane change by signaling, and then nudging the wheel when it's clear to move.
There is also an experimental mode which stops and goes at stop signs and stop lights.
If the driver monitoring camera in the comma detects you fell asleep or something, it will slow the car down and pull over. All the stock lane keep that I have used in cars, if you fail to nudge the wheel they just disengage and you keep going at full speed in a straight line...
Then we delve into OpenPilot forks like SunnyPilot that let you do things like decouple gas/break control from steering control, so you can control the gas/brake yourself and let comma just always steer for you. Comma can also steer more aggressively in turns than any lane keep I have seen, and when it can't you will see the limit being reached on the little display so you know you will need to help out on that tight curve.
Experimental mode isn't the best all the time, and SunnyPilot allows hybrid mode which uses regular mode and dynamically switches to experimental mode for stop signs and stop lights.
With SunnyPilot it can even read your car's blind spot monitors to automatically make the lane change hen clear without you having to nudge the wheel.
Some have been playing with concepts of auto navigation too where the car will take exits and turn through intersections for you.
The comma.ai devices have 10W of compute power and the current driving models only use 1W, so there is room to scale to better models with teh current comma devices. There is also talk of supporting more cameras for side views and external GPUs addons with 100W compute for potential FSD level models.
> All the stock lane keep that I have used in cars, if you fail to nudge the wheel they just disengage and you keep going at full speed in a straight line...
is this true for current EVs as well? My 2015 Tesla S brings the car to a controlled stop with hazard warnings on.
AP is definitely the exception and would safely stop you. But also AP is gone from new Teslas now and the comma costs what ir costs to subscribe to Tesla’s driving features for just 1 year.
All EVs probably stop fairly quickly because they brake when you aren’t pressing the gas or cruising. But I don’t know any that keep steering for you when they disengage when you fail to maintain attention.
..if your Tesla is an EV, aren’t you answering your question?
Commercial implementations back when this launched was vastly inferior to it, if users' accounts are to be believed. Obvious signs of too high P in PID and such.
Tesla Autopilot was always available, but they were as sketchy as it always had been. Shoving the head into road barriers and fire trucks with rear ends that were less car looking especially to pre-LLM image recognition models.
OpenPilot also allow retrofits. People who own 2017-2023ish cars, shipped between the times after self driving hype took off and before command signature enforcement was widely implemented, can DIY self driving without re-buying the whole car, put aside whether it's legal or whether you should.
Maybe this doesn't beep at you if you take your hands off the wheel?
And people think that is a good thing?
It beeps at you if you stop paying attention, which is superior. Hands on wheel is an arbitrary design decision more likely to placate what a layman would think is necessary to ensure safe AI steering.
It’s an option in open pilot, but not one that defaults to on
My car judges it if I have put in any manual inputs over the past 10 or so seconds then it starts complaining. Which is seemingly reasonable however there's plenty of nearly perfect straight aways where there's nothing to do for it or me.
It would be nice if it had a system where if it isn't doing anything, it doesn't think I'm not doing anything either.
Except those straight, boring roads that require no input are also exactly where and when I most want to use autopilot. This means I have to manually adjust to keep the car happy, instead of letting the well-aligned car just carry on. Autopilot ends up being more work, and more annoying, than just driving myself
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I wondered the same thing but after trying a few oem attempts, there’s definitely huge room for improvement. Lane following isn’t very ‘smart’ and doesn’t take context into account (ie. changing position in the lane based on clearance from other vehicles, potholes, upcoming curves etc.)
Lane follow? Does it have lane discovery? There was snow on my commute this morning. 4-land highway was basically follow the leader. Pick some line where you think there is the most traction and stick with it. I have yet to see footage of an autodrive system in such a situation.
Yes, models have been laneless for awhile
What's hilarious to me is that this scenario is framed as such an impossibly difficult thing for self-driving technology to accomplish. Detecting a car in front of you, and maneuvering left or right is doable without even using advanced models, nevermind the fact that we have them now. The other supposedly impossible feat is for the self-driving car to create a lane when there's been so much snow that the lines and thus lanes aren't visible. Given high quality sensor data, does it really seem that impossibly hard for the computer, which is already competently driving on the road in practice, in SF and Phoenix and LA; it seems impossibly hard for that computer to take the full width of the remaining road, divide in two, assuming it's a bidirectional road, and then create as much lanes + safety margin as can (safely) exist, and then pick one? Proof is in the pudding and all, so here's a 4 year old video showing that comma.ai's capable of that, in the sunny winter but snowy road condition in that video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oCCn96N2ys
No cars to follow. No lane markings. Just a sheet of white with ditches on both side. Worse yet, no prior practice. Where you know the lanes are means little when the other cars are not respecting them. (As if lanes matter as nobody wants to drive that close together.) It isnt impossible but certainly a far more difficult problem than navigating an LA suburb.
Nobody is claiming that this will work in that situation, but there are thousands of much more common situations where it does work and makes driving more safe and enjoyable.
I have a car with smart cruise, but there's plenty of room for improvement. It isn't very smart at determining when it can avoid braking, such as when a car well ahead has slowed for a right turn. It also brakes too aggressively when someone cuts in front of me on the highway, in situations where just lifting off the gas would be better.
It also times out very quickly when traffic comes to a complete standstill, requiring manual intervention to get going again, and it doesn't give any indication to the driver when that occurs.
If these things bothered me much more than they do, I'd be interested in comma.ai as a possible solution. As it stands, the OEM radar cruise control is "Eh, good enough, I guess."
I’m fine with BlueCruise but my free sub is up next year and that’s when I’ll look into comma hardware.