# Build your own self driving car!



## Stelmaria (Sep 30, 2011)

Any takers?



> A few days before Thanksgiving, George Hotz, a 26-year-old hacker, invites me to his house in San Francisco to check out a project he’s been working on. He says it’s a self-driving car that he had built in about a month. The claim seems absurd. But when I turn up that morning, in his garage there’s a white 2016 Acura ILX outfitted with a laser-based radar (lidar) system on the roof and a camera mounted near the rearview mirror. A tangle of electronics is attached to a wooden board where the glove compartment used to be, a joystick protrudes where you’d usually find a gearshift, and a 21.5-inch screen is attached to the center of the dash. “Tesla only has a 17-inch screen,” Hotz says.





> Hotz plans to best the Mobileye technology with off-the-shelf electronics. He’s building a kit consisting of six cameras—similar to the $13 ones found in smartphones—that would be placed around the car. Two would go inside near the rearview mirror, one in the back, two on the sides to cover blind spots, and a fisheye camera up top. He then trains the control software for the cameras using what’s known as a neural net—a type of self-teaching artificial-intelligence mechanism that grabs data from drivers and learns from their choices. The goal is to sell the camera and software package for $1,000 a pop either to automakers or, if need be, directly to consumers who would buy customized vehicles at a showroom run by Hotz. “I have 10 friends who already want to buy one,” he says.


George Hotz Is Taking on Tesla by Himself


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## Miniblini (Jun 4, 2014)

Building car+selfdriving+actually using it=
This can only end poorly.


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## leftover crack (May 12, 2013)

I believe this will work 99% and that guy is amazing


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## Another Lost Cause (Oct 6, 2015)

I wonder what happens when mud, road tar, and other grime clogs up the cameras. It seems we could be entering an era of hastily, hacked-together, homemade self-driving cars that haven't been rigorously tested before opening their throttles on public roads. The carnage could be spectacular as some self-driving system pasted together by garage tinkerers mistakes the sidewalk for the road and paints the ground with the flesh of countless pedestrians.


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## Vahyavishdapaya (Sep 2, 2014)

I don't doubt that a backyard mechanic can build a car (that is to say, rebuild one, or modify one substantially, rather than building from scratch with nothing but raw materials; I know amateur mechanics who have built their own engines and they have worked out fantastically well), but a self-driving one goes too far.


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## Carpentet810 (Nov 17, 2013)

I think a self driving Christine would be an excellent idea!


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## Stelmaria (Sep 30, 2011)

This guy may seem like an amateur, but this article demonstrates some of the techniques used to develop self-driving cars.

Now in several other threads, others have suggested that self driving cars will reduce deaths on the road dramatically. But how would such a car learn to drive better than a human if it simply learns from how humans drive?


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## Vahyavishdapaya (Sep 2, 2014)

Snowy Leopard said:


> This guy may seem like an amateur, but this article demonstrates some of the techniques used to develop self-driving cars.
> 
> Now in several other threads, others have suggested that self driving cars will reduce deaths on the road dramatically. But how would such a car learn to drive better than a human if it simply learns from how humans drive?


You could probably rig up a car which can go faster around a circuit in an individual time trial than any human could, since that just comes down to linear equation solving, but I don't know how you would go about building software to deal with the volatile unpredictability of the open road.






Good luck to the engineers who have to build self-driving cars for the Indian market!


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## Stelmaria (Sep 30, 2011)

Sukairain said:


> Good luck to the engineers who have to build self-driving cars for the Indian market!


I agree! 

Maybe it would only work if only self-driving cars were allowed (which would unfairly penalize those who can't afford cars or choose other modes).


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## joshman108 (Apr 14, 2014)

Snowy Leopard said:


> But how would such a car learn to drive better than a human if it simply learns from how humans drive?


I cant tell if youre being serious or not


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## Alles_Paletti (May 15, 2013)

I'm in awe.


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## PowerShell (Feb 3, 2013)

Sukairain said:


> I don't doubt that a backyard mechanic can build a car (that is to say, rebuild one, or modify one substantially, rather than building from scratch with nothing but raw materials; I know amateur mechanics who have built their own engines and they have worked out fantastically well), but a self-driving one goes too far.


Google has spent millions of dollars on this. You might be able to hack together something that works in ideal conditions, but I highly doubt 1 guy could write all the code and outdo a company who has spent millions of dollars. I guess we'll have to see.


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## 95134hks (Dec 20, 2015)

Snowy Leopard said:


> Any takers?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


The self driving car is one of the stupidest ideas that Google has ever had.

The less fools who copycat the safer Mountain View will be.


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## Stelmaria (Sep 30, 2011)

95134hks said:


> The self driving car is one of the stupidest ideas that Google has ever had.


Why is it a stupid idea? (it is not Google's idea either - people have been talking about it for decades and there are many teams working on self driving cars).

It's no more stupid than having people drive cars.


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## Peter (Feb 27, 2010)

Snowy Leopard said:


> This guy may seem like an amateur, but this article demonstrates some of the techniques used to develop self-driving cars.
> 
> Now in several other threads, others have suggested that self driving cars will reduce deaths on the road dramatically. But how would such a car learn to drive better than a human if it simply learns from how humans drive?


It doesn't learn from how humans drive. It learns by driving.

That's also how humans learn how to drive. By driving a car.

Computers won't have the problem of getting destracted and have the advantage of better and more hardware to pay attention to the road. The chance that they make a mistake is a lot smaller. But it doesn't guarantee they'll never make a mistake.

Self driving cars will be safer, because they'll simply will end up in less accidents per mile driven. Not because they never get into any accidents.


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## blit (Dec 17, 2010)

Hotz is smart enough to pull it off. But I can't stand him. He loves to hear himself talk. Still, I don't doubt he'd have a reasonable prototype unless he finds something else to do.


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## sprinkles (Feb 7, 2010)

This is about as close as I'm going to get I think.






It took a bit of a trick to make it not freeze up in corners if all the sensors so happened to get equal readings. I had to make it favor one direction to avoid logical deadlock.


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## piano (May 21, 2015)

no!


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## Father of Dragons (May 7, 2012)

Good god. This guy is very inspiring. Really makes me want to hit the books that much harder. He seems like he is quite abrasive but people like him are those that make amazing things happen. On another note, I really do feel bad for the people who live and drive near Palo Alto, though. If anyone is going to get killed by a self-driving car, it's going to be on one of the highways in that area.


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## Stelmaria (Sep 30, 2011)

Father of Dragons said:


> On another note, I really do feel bad for the people who live and drive near Palo Alto, though. If anyone is going to get killed by a self-driving car, it's going to be on one of the highways in that area.


Meanwhile around 3000 Californians are killed by human drivers each year.


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## MisterPerfect (Nov 20, 2015)

Sukairain said:


> I don't doubt that a backyard mechanic can build a car (that is to say, rebuild one, or modify one substantially, rather than building from scratch with nothing but raw materials; I know amateur mechanics who have built their own engines and they have worked out fantastically well), but a self-driving one goes too far.


I dont doubt a mechanic can build a car from scratch.


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## General Lee Awesome (Sep 28, 2014)

Never, the only reason why I drive a car is the odd chance I become famous in the newspaper, well that and to get to point B.


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