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An Introduction to the CAN Bus: How to Programmatically Control a Car

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21–30 of 110 posts

Re: An Introduction to the CAN Bus: How to Programmatically Control a Car

#21

I am wondering whether is there a truck that have drive by wire? That would be interesting. Monster Self Driving Truck.

For quite some time, trucks have been where ADAS systems were first deployed in production (ACC, lane departure detection).

Re: An Introduction to the CAN Bus: How to Programmatically Control a Car

#23

I am wondering whether is there a truck that have drive by wire? That would be interesting. Monster Self Driving Truck.

All the big John Deere tractors are drive by wire. The steering wheel has no mechanical connection to the wheels. We (I'm an employee of Deere, though of course I don't speak for them) do some things I cannot talk about to verify that only authorized devices can steer the tractors. How to do this has been given to at least one university interested in self driving tractors - after verifying they will take care of that knowledge (exactly what this means I don't know)

Re: An Introduction to the CAN Bus: How to Programmatically Control a Car

#24
post #10

Can you imagine the havok when terrorists figure out they can program cars to hunt and kill pedestrians in crowded spaces? Currently the terrorist needs to drive the vehicle, which makes it a suicide mission. How much more deadly would it be if it was reduced to just the cost of the car and a low chance of getting caught? How can we defend against this?

You can't. It's not that hard to make a controller that lets you physically turn the wheel using an RC remote, it's just a matter of attaching a servo to some cords pulling it (there's a guide on Instructables).

The reason terrorists don't do that has nothing to do with being hard.

Re: An Introduction to the CAN Bus: How to Programmatically Control a Car

#27
post #10

Can you imagine the havok when terrorists figure out they can program cars to hunt and kill pedestrians in crowded spaces? Currently the terrorist needs to drive the vehicle, which makes it a suicide mission. How much more deadly would it be if it was reduced to just the cost of the car and a low chance of getting caught? How can we defend against this?

I have a hard time imagining self-driving cars merely negotiating the traffic I drive in each day much less deal with the myriad foreign policy and security issues that have led us to this point in time. Imagine the lawsuits if it can ever be proved that a murder was committed by someone hacking an automobile--and I do suspect it has already happened. The drive-by-wire gas pedal and shifter in my car cause me concern…

The self driving car doesn't need to be perfect, it needs to be better than humans. That is a much lower bar. Self driving cars have already demonstrated their ability to handle traffic better than humans, but there are other situations where they are much worse.

Re: An Introduction to the CAN Bus: How to Programmatically Control a Car

#28
post #22

Are there more books or sites about car hacking except "The Car Hacker’s Handbook"? This is very interesting topic.

Sure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEYCU62yeYk and the mentioned paper i assume is https://ioactive.com/pdfs/IOActive_Remote_Car_Hacking.pdf

Re: An Introduction to the CAN Bus: How to Programmatically Control a Car

#29
post #2

Interesting - never realized there would be multiple CAN buses in a car. That probably makes it a lot easier to not screw things up - if you know that the medium speed bus is only connected to non-safety-critical systems, then it's easier to trust that when you send out your hand-crafted CAN packets, you're not going to cause anything too drastic to happen.

Indeed. Especially important when you remember that most of the (many!) devices in a car sitting on CAN buses come from outside suppliers, and black-box testing of these modules can only go so far to verify the CAN implementation and stability.

AFAIK, Ford actually mandates that their suppliers use a standard CAN stack provided/licensed by Ford (FNOS, the Ford Network Operating System) to try and ensure a level of quality in implementations. It's a good idea, one I haven't heard of other automakers doing (although I'm not in the industry any more)

Re: An Introduction to the CAN Bus: How to Programmatically Control a Car

#30
post #10

Can you imagine the havok when terrorists figure out they can program cars to hunt and kill pedestrians in crowded spaces? Currently the terrorist needs to drive the vehicle, which makes it a suicide mission. How much more deadly would it be if it was reduced to just the cost of the car and a low chance of getting caught? How can we defend against this?

You can't. It's not that hard to make a controller that lets you physically turn the wheel using an RC remote, it's just a matter of attaching a servo to some cords pulling it (there's a guide on Instructables). The reason terrorists don't do that has nothing to do with being hard.

> It's not that hard to make a controller that lets you physically turn the wheel using an RC remote

> The reason terrorists don't do that has nothing to do with being hard.

This is false. Remote-controlled VBIEDs are absolutely a thing

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