New Device Prelude to Autonomous Driving?

CommaAI new device increases self-driving 

Founder has his own ideas about autonomous vehicles

CommaAI founder George Hotz says that the big tech companies and car manufacturers have it all wrong about the way to bring about autonomous vehicles. For him, it is all about the software and using the right ai.

A device his company has just introduced, EON dashcam developer kit, increases self-driving capabilities, although due to regulations, it is limited. But just one look at the companies demonstration videos and it is apparent that self-driving is occurring through its technology.

The videos show the company's dashcam device at work in real driving conditions. Along with a driver, the car accelerates and brakes on its own, as it responds to visual information coming in through the device. Steering is also done autonomously, though the degree of turn is limited to keeping the car in a single lane and for deeper curves. From Engadget

Is it something more than AutoPilot and Lane Keeping Assist?

It essentially works like Tesla's Autopilot and Lane Keeping Assist but offers a bit more and is connected to Wave GPS. The system connects the device to the Android phone camera and can interact with signals from the sensory features already built into modern cars by manufacturers. Currently, the device works with HondaSense, Accura PlusWatch, and TSS-P found in the Toyota Rav4 and Prius and a few others, see website.

With the device, an adapter, car computer plug-in interface, all provided by CommaAI - and the driver's android cell phone, many Honda, and Toyota vehicle owners can experience self-driving that is probably a shade better than AutoPilot. Not a spectacular feat, but it is more about the potential and possibility of the device. And in the future, the company hopes to add more vehicles to the list but for now, is concentrating on top-sellers.

Hotz prepared to battle Google and Tesla for autonomous vehicle breakthroughs

Hotz believes the future pathway to autonomous vehicles can be achieved just as quickly and more efficiently through an open method that his technology offers. His open sourced community of device users and drivers are participating in collecting real-time data that will eventually make autonomous vehicles possible, he argues.

The visual information the thousands of users capture can build a database that can be feed into neural network ai, making driving software operate vehicles ever so slightly better. It is neural network ai that gets smarter and smarter the more repetitions it gets and the more information it sees.

It is the way the DeepMind was able to teach its ai to beat the world's best Go player. Hotz sees using his device as a cheaper way to go rather than buying a new vehicle with the latest and greatest AutoPilot technology. What's more, he must have all the big players a little nervous about who cracks the code of autonomous vehicles first. Below Hotz talks about his technology and the future of autonomous vehicles. From Clean Technica