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Autopilot on Cars for $999

comma.ai

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Re: Autopilot on Cars for $999

#231

Post by birken »

jedberg wrote: post #209
elil17 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honda LKA keeps you centered and lets you take your hands off the wheel.

Only if you want to look like a drunk driver. I wish it worked like that, but all it does is jerk back to the center of the lane about half the time and then complain that "steering is required".

Yes I really like the Honda adaptive cruise control, especially in bumper to bumper traffic. Does a fantastic job, saves a lot of driver fatigue and other than perhaps not being as smooth and fuel efficient as I could be, works exactly how you'd hope.

The LKA on the other hand only works only about half the time even in perfect conditions, when it works it doesn't even do that good a job and you have to provide steering input every 10 seconds anyways.

This is my experience on a 2020 Honda CRV so I assume this is among the best you can expect from Honda.

I honestly did not know this product existed and am very tempted, because an upgraded version of the adaptive cruise control would be very tempting. I've found that monitoring that the car is doing the right thing is a lot less taxing than actually driving, but feels equally safe.

Re: Autopilot on Cars for $999

#232

Post by gregatragenet »

Surprised how much hate there is here for this technology from people who never tried it. I've had one for a year. It is game-changing. You can drive what you like - it supports many different cars.. I can road trip for hours on autopilot and then drive my Subaru on rocky forest roads that would rip the undercarriage out of a Tesla.. It does adaptive cruise control and lane centering for hours on end.. Being able to relax (but monitor) for the 8+ hour drives up and down the state of California is great. Being able to adjust the radio, have a snack, or just sit with your hands in your lap while the car handles lanekeeping feels like a miracle.

There is a 'dating' period when you get it where you and the autopilot learn each others limitations.. Knowing how steep a turn your car can do without hitting torque limits, learning to trust the ACC to slow down with traffic ahead, knowing how long you can sit in stop-and-go traffic without it disengaging (varies based on car and car capabilities), what light conditions it finds challenging (same ones as humans, driving into the sunset) etc. But now I know its limits, know how it notifies when it is reaching limits or unsure, I have full confidence in it when its working within its capabilities.

For those who think this device is going to kill them -- the safeties built in make it virtually impossible. Yes the main device (Eon) runs python code. However there is a hardware device which acts as a firewall between the Eon and the CAN bus which prevents any commands beyond a (very low) torque limit such that the car cannot take any action which a human couldn't notice and correct within 1 second. BY FAR the most dangerous part of my drives continue to be the drivers surrounding me who don't look or signal when entering my lane.

Re: Autopilot on Cars for $999

#233

Post by wiml »

gamegoblin wrote: post #213
crazypython wrote: post #97

If self-driving companies really believed in their product, they would bundle car insurance that only works when self-driving is on with the product, and it would be cheaper than normal car insurance.

The Comma AI founder has explicitly stated that their endgame was the insurance business. I'm not sure if he has since changed his stance on this. It makes sense, though, in a super surveillance-capitalism way. Offer a close-to-cost self-driving product and use the data to estimate the risk of everyone on the road (both the users of your product, but really anyone your product has eyes on). The comma AI founder has s…

That last statement is almost more interesting than the autopilot stuff. How do they determine who's "really" a good driver in order to correlate it with whatever they're measuring that has a bimodal distribution? Is it possible to teach someone to change their driving style so that they're in the other lobe? If so do they become an actual better/worse driver?

Re: Autopilot on Cars for $999

#234

Post by chairmanwow1 »

mmglr wrote: post #154
chairmanwow1 wrote: post #3

I bought my car with the express intent of getting a compatible car for Comma. My comma absolutely increased the utility of my car to me. Been on 3 huge road trips that I wouldn’t have considered without the device. 12 hours on the road isn’t something I would do everyday, but absolutely bearable with a comma.

If anything it sounds to me as if the comma provided a false sense of security. Drawing from experience driving 9 hours is already grueling. At hour 10, 11 or 12 would you have been able to take control during a failure of the system?

I certainly think so. I have built a nice intuition for the kinds of scenarios that the system doesn’t handle well. So it’s a pretty seamless transition where I assume control whenever a slow vehicle is merging or an aggressive driver is weaving through the lanes.

I recently rented a car and on a much shorter journey (90 minutes) I was struck by how much more tedious and frustrating it was to manually pilot the vehicle.

I think the thing that makes driving grueling is that you can mostly drive at a subconscious level. Staying in the lane and matching speed are mostly automatic, but occasionally you zone out for a second, or get absorbed into the audiobook. Then you start to drift to the edge of the lane or get a little to close to a decelerating car in front. Then there is a hard attention snap where you are forced back to focused attention of the driving task.

An L2 system does marvels for just smoothing out those peaks. It’s much less frequent that you have to intervene, so your attention can stay at a much more comfortable level and smoothly ramp back to high focus when a situation presents itself.

Re: Autopilot on Cars for $999

#235

Post by kirse »

As a motorcyclist, I figure I will eventually end up as a JIRA ticket in some "self-crashing car" system's backlog.

But then again, that is the story of society - progress slowly built up over time on the pile of irradiated, mangled, dead and destroyed bodies over the course of millennia of lessons learned.

Just hoping that they name the feature / patch after me.

Re: Autopilot on Cars for $999

#237

Post by jedberg »

birken wrote: post #231
jedberg wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you want to look like a drunk driver. I wish it worked like that, but all it does is jerk back to the center of the lane about half the time and then complain that "steering is required".

Yes I really like the Honda adaptive cruise control, especially in bumper to bumper traffic. Does a fantastic job, saves a lot of driver fatigue and other than perhaps not being as smooth and fuel efficient as I could be, works exactly how you'd hope. The LKA on the other hand only works only about half the time even in perfect conditions, when it works it doesn't even do that good a job and you have to provide steer…

Exactly. I love the adaptive cruise (although I wish it would go below 25mph) and it makes long highway drives so much less tiring. If I also didn't have to worry about minor steering adjustments, it would be even better.

Re: Autopilot on Cars for $999

#238

Post by throwaway0a5e »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #178
bri3d wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they intercept whichever CAN bus in the target vehicle is used to send Adaptive Cruise Control and Automatic Lane Keeping messages, and send their own instead. On many target cars, they actually simply use the stock Adaptive Cruise Control and openpilot provides only the steering (ALK).

Seems like it could have disastrous results if the OEM components start talking on the bus, sharing a completely different state.

Canbus is designed to be an unreliable electronic shouting match. The modules on it expect it and can handle it.

Re: Autopilot on Cars for $999

#239

Post by birken »

jedberg wrote: post #237
birken wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I really like the Honda adaptive cruise control, especially in bumper to bumper traffic. Does a fantastic job, saves a lot of driver fatigue and other than perhaps not being as smooth and fuel efficient as I could be, works exactly how you'd hope. The LKA on the other hand only works only about half the time even in perfect conditions, when it works it doesn't even do that good a job and you have to provide steer…

Exactly. I love the adaptive cruise (although I wish it would go below 25mph) and it makes long highway drives so much less tiring. If I also didn't have to worry about minor steering adjustments, it would be even better.

My adaptive cruise control does work from 0-25mph and it is great, especially for bumper to bumper. You only have to watch out for cars aggressive merging in front of you (which the distance sensor doesn't always pick up) but otherwise the car does everything. It doesn't do pure stop and go, but the car rarely every fully stops and once it does you only have to press one button to get it going again.

Re: Autopilot on Cars for $999

#240

Post by chrisjs95 »

iancarroll wrote: post #218
bko wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly curious why you trust Volvo more. They're completely opaque. There's no issue board, can't even find a terms of service online. No over the air updates. Can't even find a technical manual or version number of the software you're running. I assume you just have some car salesman point you to the button to press. Independent reviews put open pilot much higher than Volvo despite volvo having much more reach…

> And I'd be willing to bet their processes and standards are much better than big auto. Comma has a neat product, but I really do not agree with comments like this. The auto industry is terrible, but they are miles ahead of Comma in the process realm. The industry has spent a lot of time on safety standards like ASIL and AUTOSAR. They would never allow Comma to ship, because it is written in Python, a pausable langu…

All the critical pieces are written in C. He's talked about it many, many times.
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