Can anyone here comment on actually using a Comma product?
I don’t even drive a car, but I don’t see why anyone would buy something like this yet. My point being that it’s not full self driving, and frankly its safety is entirely questionable.
Self driving is supposed to make driving less stressful, but does having a system like this actually do that? Or does it make you more stressed because you have to be conscious of the computer?
Don’t get me wrong, I like what George Hotz is trying here, but what incentive is there to be an early adopter?
I find driving much less fatiguing when using my Eon (the previous iteration of this product). Taking yourself out of the feedback loop of constantly adjusting steering (and gas if in traffic) makes the experience much more relaxing even though you still have to pay full attention. In my experience, OpenPilot is really rock solid in normal highway driving scenarios and there isn't anything stressful about using it.
The driver must always be capable to immediately retake manual control of the vehicle, by stepping on either pedal or by pressing the cancel button.
The vehicle must not alter its trajectory too quickly for the driver to safely react. This means that while the system is engaged, the actuators are constrained to operate within reasonable limits.
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Those checks are separately coded into both OpenPilot, the self-driving software, and Panda, the microcontroller responsible for communicating between OpenPilot and the vehicle.
OpenPilot generates all of the control messages to send to the vehicle based off of feedback from the cars sensors and it's own camera. it has rate limits for all control messages it generates so that it can't jerk the steering wheel or slam on the brakes (as of now it leaves Collision Avoidance up to the stock system)
These control messages are then passed to the Panda over USB. Panda is a microcontroller that converts the control messages into CAN messages that the vehicle can understand. The Panda has the same rate limits checks hardcoded into the firmware and it will reject any control messages that are outside the limits
Finally, because Panda is sending the same CAN messages as the stock ADAS system, whatever safety mechanisms the OEM implemented apply to OpenPilot as well. Most cars have some form of torque caps and some form of rate limiting baked into the EPS firmware.
There’s the self driving code and native layers that runs on a bog standard Android phone, then an Arduino like microcontroller handles interfacing which is more or less realtime. Malformed, illegal or out of range commands would be trimmed out if occurs.
They also has a narrower than commonly used limits and that is reportedly insufficient for tighter curves on some highways but are done so in good faith I guess.
I have an eon and love it for highway driving. It makes long trips relaxing. It's basically the combination of really good adaptive cruise control and active lane keep assist. And I feel it's safe within those limitations.
Open Pilot keeps me in my lane on the highway following a safe distance behind other cars. I have a Toyota with TSS 2.0, so the steering is powerful enough on curves. My only complaint about steering is that on tight turns like highway onramps it will slow down a little too much.
While I was driving my last car I got in an accident when I was driving down the highway at highway speeds and everyone in my lane came to a complete stop. I'm convinced I would not have gotten in that accident if I was driving my current car with open pilot active.
True, I agree with that. You can still use stock TSS 2.0 instead of open pilot even with it set up in your car, and I tested out stock TSS 2.0 before I bought my eon. I'm familiar with how it works. My last car was more than 10 years old, and adaptive cruise control probably would have kept me safe.
Here's how I compare the two systems. Stock adaptive cruise control is decent and useful. Stock also allows you control the follow distance. Openpilot doesn't allow you to adjust follow distance but it's conservative. OP is really smooth, so I think it's better than stock.
Stock lane keep assist is mildly annoying at best. I find the alarms annoying. And stock active lane keep assist is weak. I wouldn't generally consider stock LKA to be worth using for me. OP LKA is really good. It's great at keeping you in a lane, and it's extremely smooth. OP LKA is something I really appreciate.
You can technically use OP ACC without OP LKA, but the combination of the two is greater than the sum of its parts. Driving with OP is a surprisingly good experience. I was showing it to a relative recently and she said she was surprised at how smooth and how comfortable she was with it active. She mentioned if she wasn't watching the steering wheel she would not have noticed that I was not actually steering.
I don’t even drive a car, but I don’t see why anyone would buy something like this yet. My point being that it’s not full self driving, and frankly its safety is entirely questionable.
Self driving is supposed to make driving less stressful, but does having a system like this actually do that? Or does it make you more stressed because you have to be conscious of the computer?
Don’t get me wrong, I like what George Hotz is trying here, but what incentive is there to be an early adopter?