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Autopilot on Cars for $999

comma.ai

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Re: Autopilot on Cars for $999

#131

Post by Traster »

madamelic wrote: post #33
tdeck wrote: post #4

Anyone know if this has killed someone yet?

Human life is sacred. Absolutely. but. If we are concerned with cars killing people, we should get rid of cars. This FUD around self-driving == killing people will, in the long-term, cause more deaths than the handful of sensationalized stories about self-driving deaths. The only reason those car crashes get national attention is because they were self-driving. In every other way they are boring. Bicyclists hit by ca…

This ridiculous assertion any self-driving == better than humna is just ridiculous too. This is a website selling a self-driving devkit with a big "buy it now" sign that also has a disclaimer saying "Well you're not really buying it, if you kill someone, we've never met".

Sure, self-driving cars that were better than humans would be good, but what we have right now is self-driving cars that are maybe better than humans in normal conditions (controlling for type of car, conditions etc), and completely break down in bad conditions and often fail unsafe in between.

>Do you think you'd see a bunch of FUD about a 2021 manually-driven Chevy mystery car getting in a minor fenderbender and equating it with the safety of the entire car industry? No.

Well of course not, because we all moved to self-driving cars in 2017 as Elon Musk told us we would.

There's a very simple reason we aren't worried if Bob down the road crashes his car, it's because we're not binary identical bob, and people haven't been systematically lying about bob's capabilities for the last decade.

Re: Autopilot on Cars for $999

#132

Post by bri3d »

RealityVoid wrote: post #94
bri3d wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this has been his project for many years now - he threw a fit and fled to China in 2016 when the NHTSA sent him a Special Order requesting test data for the Comma One product, which he then cancelled and released as pseudo open-source (the ML model is still a closed black box).

Can you point me to the part that is closed? Last time I looked, there were just a bunch of weights.

Isn't any ML model "just a bunch of weights," if you look at it right?

So, where does "modelV2" come from here, in the part that plans the lateral steering action? https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/4ace476f14bb73c354... . It's a model. A video frame goes into the model, and somehow the desired path comes back out. That's the core of the driving system!

Here's an analysis of one of the closed parts: https://medium.com/@chengyao.shen/decoding-comma-ai-openpilo...

Re: Autopilot on Cars for $999

#133

Post by buran77 »

gonehome wrote: post #99
slg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>THIS IS ALPHA QUALITY SOFTWARE FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY. THIS IS NOT A PRODUCT. It is weird that one of the only things I see above the fold on the company's home page is a "Buy Now" button considering they don't actually sell "a product".

Yeah - I don't think this would hold up, you can't really have it both ways. Either you're selling something and taking some responsibility for certain failures, or it's research that you don't want people to use on the road. This comes across as them selling a product they know could fail in dangerous ways, but they don't want to be responsible for any of it. Basically, "don't use this on the road" wink wink, but we…

> Yeah - I don't think this would hold up, you can't really have it both ways.

I don't think they would have any legal problems due to this. They sell it but clearly label it as experimental, for research only, and urge buyers to comply with local regulation. And the law pretty much everywhere states that the driver is responsible for driving the car and for the outcomes of any modification brought to the car that was not pass homologation.

Tesla is a real example that passed this test. Their marketing language brands AP as "fully self driving, some features unavailable due to local laws". The "wink wink" may be obvious for the buyer but not in the eyes of the law. Letting the car drive itself is the driver's failure, not Tesla's. Tesla can at most be held responsible for misleading advertisement and ordered not to use specific language (as it actually happened).

Re: Autopilot on Cars for $999

#134

Post by brianwawok »

chairmanwow1 wrote: post #90
hbarka wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla’s product also requires driver monitoring. They explicitly say so, so your statement is clearly false. Not excusing Tesla’s faults but the volume of Tesla’s cars on the road compared to Comma’s would probably explain the difference in statistics.

Tesla has had “driver monitoring” in that you had to apply some torque to the wheel, while the comma does gaze detection to make sure you aren’t watching a movie or sleeping. AFAIK Tesla is adding driver monitoring cameras.

Telsa has cameras in the cabin for all cars now, but have never stated that they are going to enable them for driver monitoring purposes. (But their code has flags like driver_eyes_up and drivers_eye_down, so at least it's on their mind...)

Re: Autopilot on Cars for $999

#135

Post by 23iofj »

Closi wrote: post #121
23iofj wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most software developers have mostly operated in largely unregulated domains, so there's a MIS understanding of how manufacturer responsibility works in industries like automotive. Saying "I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING" in the automotive software space is the product liability equivalent of Michael Scott screaming "I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY" in The Office.

Well, their legal technique is a little more nuanced. They are selling a product which is a legal and legitimate driver assistance tool which does not have autopilot. You, as a user, can then modify the device by flashing unregulated code onto it to give it autopilot code, which is not advised by comma.ai *wink wink*

I expect this to end about as well as it did last time.

35 million miles is statistically meaningless.

Re: Autopilot on Cars for $999

#136

Post by t0mas88 »

stjo wrote: post #96
thethethethe wrote: post #87

It seems like the market for a product like this (augmenting older vehicles) will diminish over time as more and more vehicles come with these features plus rolling updates and more advanced sensors standard. If this proves to be the case, I wonder what the company will do to pivot

Sell directly to manufacturers? Nearly no one (except Tesla) has anything coming in the near future. Why anyone they pay billions to develop the technology in-house if they can just pay Comma.ai to integrate a sub $1000 thingy in their cars.

Nearly all luxury brands have had lane keeping for years. Similar quality to what Tesla offers, just not marketed as broadly and typically not available on a model 3 kind of entry level. But at Tesla S price levels, all other manufacturers offer similar lane keeping and adaptive cruise capabilities.

Re: Autopilot on Cars for $999

#137

Post by tedivm »

slg wrote: post #34
delightful wrote: post #18

Is it correct Comma.AI sees this as the following statement below appears to say, or am I missing something? If so, why would anyone be using this product outside of a test environment that’s fully controlled? — “Any user of this software shall indemnify and hold harmless comma.ai, Inc. and its directors, officers, employees, agents, stockholders, affiliates, subcontractors and customers from and against all allegati…

>THIS IS ALPHA QUALITY SOFTWARE FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY. THIS IS NOT A PRODUCT. It is weird that one of the only things I see above the fold on the company's home page is a "Buy Now" button considering they don't actually sell "a product".

That line only exists in their Git Repository, which contains the latest code. That line does not exist on their website.

If you want to use software directly out of someone's development git repository then yeah, you're going to get alpha level code.

Re: Autopilot on Cars for $999

#138

Post by t0mas88 »

leesec wrote: post #103
thethethethe wrote: post #87

It seems like the market for a product like this (augmenting older vehicles) will diminish over time as more and more vehicles come with these features plus rolling updates and more advanced sensors standard. If this proves to be the case, I wonder what the company will do to pivot

So far there are only 2 car companies with comparable quality, Tesla, and GM with Supercruise ( available on only 1 model ). This is intended to provide functionality for all the rest

Have you seen recent Volvo, BMW and Mercedes systems? They all have good lane keeping and adaptive cruise / stop & go for several years now. And I'm sure there are many more that I'm not aware of.

Re: Autopilot on Cars for $999

#139

Post by bko »

gonehome wrote: post #99
slg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>THIS IS ALPHA QUALITY SOFTWARE FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY. THIS IS NOT A PRODUCT. It is weird that one of the only things I see above the fold on the company's home page is a "Buy Now" button considering they don't actually sell "a product".

Yeah - I don't think this would hold up, you can't really have it both ways. Either you're selling something and taking some responsibility for certain failures, or it's research that you don't want people to use on the road. This comes across as them selling a product they know could fail in dangerous ways, but they don't want to be responsible for any of it. Basically, "don't use this on the road" wink wink, but we…

> This comes across as them selling a product they know could fail in dangerous ways, but they don't want to be responsible for any of it.

This is just a safety precaution. Why wouldn't they put this in there? It may not hold up in court but it can't hurt. I don't think this means they "know it could fail in dangerous ways".

The safety model in comma.ai is actually quite brilliant. It can't perform any action faster than you're able to correct and disengage. To test it, they have someone drive while a malicious passenger seat has full access of the controls as limited to by the software. The passenger then messes with the steering and acceleration without the main driver's knowledge. The driver has to prevent the actions. The torque limit is much lower than that of Tesla or other lane-keep assist tools.

Re: Autopilot on Cars for $999

#140

Post by brianwawok »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #49
easton wrote: post #24

*$1,199 once you add in the required car harness to, you know, connect it to your car.

Adding the self driving option to a Tesla model 3 or S is up to what, like $3000 now? (on top of whatever extra tech package you have to add too) This is pretty competitively priced. A lot of folks spend more than that just on upgrading the stereo in their car.

Highway Autopilot is free and included on all current Teslas.

For an additional 10k you can do a software upgrade to FSD which does things like lane changes, and autopark, and summon. Someday, it will also hopefully do this for city streets (15 public users are on a beta of it right now).

But yah, you would never buy this on a Tesla, as the car includes a better version of it for free on all cars.

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