Yeah, the stock driver assists in most cars still need a LOT of work. I drove from San Diego to LA last weekend with a comma, and openpilot handled the entire trip without a single disengagement until I got off the highway. I’d be really impressed to see a stock LKA manage the same (although I’ve heard great things about super cruise!)
Comma ai's OpenPilot makes freeway driving really nice. I've gone miles without touching pedals or the wheel, it's definitely better than stock. Though I haven't tried AP on Tesla, and OpenPilot is basically just a really good LKA and ACC.
Having done a Seattle > SF > LA and back roadtrip with a Comma 2 back in March/April, this looks really cool.
Even with the very modest hardware of the Comma 2, it effectively takes all the stress out of highway / stay-in-lane driving. In my Audi A3, the car's ACC handles the accelerator and brakes, and openpilot handles the steering. It made the trip a whole lot more relaxing. It was also just a whole lot of fun to set up and tinker with, the community is great!
I haven't been able to observe anything close to the same quality of assistance system in any other car. Autopilot in a Model Y I drove just a few weeks ago felt plain erratic compared to openpilot, and the way it disengages completely when you make even just a small correction is really annoying. Audi's latest assistance systems silently give up as soon as the lane lines aren't 100% clear or things get a little too curvy.
If they can effectively make use of the additional camera data the Comma 3 offers in future openpilot releases, this will be well worth the price tag.
I've logged a lot of miles of Comma in a 2023 Hyundai Ioniq and 2022 Toyota Prius Prime, and the built in driving assist of both cars is nowhere near Comma, both in terms of steering and accelerator/brake.
Things that Comma handles seamlessly that the built-in cruise in both cars will not:
- Full stop and go
- Sharp turns on the highway that require slowing down (both built-in adaptive cruise modes will gladly just drive you off a cliff at 65 mph)
- Situations where the lane lines are hard to see or are implied
- Non-highway driving
- Not requiring me to touch the steering wheel every 20 seconds
Maybe those things work in higher end cars (though I'd say the Ioniq is a fairly high-end car), but then again with Comma you get it for ~$2k in a ton of cars instead of having to buy a luxury car.
It is true that if you are on a highway, with clear lane lines, the steering assist in both cars is certainly a lot better than nothing, but it's just not nearly matching the reliability and versatility of Comma in any sort of imperfect situation.
It's also notable to point out that OpenPilot is way smoother/better than stock LKAS (and otherwise), and getting better with each release (based on personal experience in Toyota and Honda/Acura cars).
I outfitted my car with Comma's openpilot and I can concur with that my experience is similar with the additional effect that overall, my driving quality of life is significantly improved.
I can tell that I already have an inordinate amount of trust in the system several weeks in on boring highway driving.
One major reason I've hesitated to buy a Comma is because it seems that it won't apply enough steering force in (most? any?) cars to reliably be able to navigate any turn, and it also won't let you know in advance if it can't do that.
So in the middle of a turn it may just not be able to steer enough and you have to suddenly take over.
I know you have to be aware and be ready to take over in any case (and when I've driven a Tesla it's tried to kill me at least a couple of times every day), but for some reason I really want anything I buy for driver assistance to be able to apply enough force for any turn.
Am I mistaken about that or what's your experience?
The better option to understand how comma's openpilot works is to go to youtube and look up openpilot videos in action.
What they are selling is an ARM board + cameras + CAN bus adapters for various vehicles. The stock software engages lane centering and longitudinal (gas/brake IF supported) and will keep the car lane centered.
For highway driving, it's a huge quality of life improvement.
I did buy a new car a few months ago, and the best possible driver assist features were a priority for me. I bought Chrysler Pacifica minivan with their "advanced" driver assist package. It's just an adaptive cruise control plus warnings when I drift off out of a clearly marked lane. It does not offer a lane keeping ability.
That's a $50k 2020 model with all premium features added. I haven't tried Comma, but from what I can see it can actually drive itself in the most routine situation - staying in a lane on a freeway. My Pacifica can't do that, even though it has 8 cameras and a radar.
> Currently it performs the functions of Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and Lane Keeping Assist System (LKAS) for Hondas, Acuras and Toyotas. It's about on par with Tesla Autopilot at launch...
> Right now openpilot supports the EON Dashcam DevKit. We'd like to support other platforms as well.
Video [0] shows the driver holding the wheel pretty often, but not around a highway curve.
I've put tens of thousands of miles on a comma.ai. it's just hands free lane keep assist. it solves my hand/shoulder fatigue issues over long drives. it's not autonomous driving and doesn't pretend to be.
if you want to drive across the ultra straight highway flyover states it's game changing. if you don't do that, it's not that useful.
At least personally (as someone driving openpilot pretty regularly) I'm a lot happier to trust openpilot than the stock system in my car since openpilot watches the driver and nags you (and eventually disengages) if you don't pay attention to the road. With the stock system I have to trust myself more.
I have seen and driven recent BMW, latest VW (ID.3) and OpenPilot on Toyota RAV4 was giving me a much better experience in both lane keeping and as a product (driver monitoring, communication with the driver, overall UI and UX). BMW, VW score by having maps data integrated, that allows them to adjust speed for curves and traffic signs. However, it is not directly related to what comma is doing right now, so I am taking it out of the equation.
Moreover, I think adding map data is just a matter of time for Comma.ai and I can imagine that adjusting speed in before entering a steep curve will be much better solved with vision, which seems also to be on Comma's roadmap.
I have the original Comma 3 in my car (2019 Acura RDX), and it's pretty game-changing for long drives. The car already has adaptive cruise control and lane-keep-assist, but you need to keep your hands on the wheel. With the Comma, I can set it up on most of the roads I drive (local or highway) and it'll keep me going at the desired speed in the center of the lane (up to a certain max turning torque, which is a limitation on the Acura LKAS system - if you're in the Bay Area, it handles 101 just fine but will struggle on the 280).
I've logged about 3k miles of autonomous driving at this point and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it if your car supports it, with the understanding that it's a limited system and you still have to pay attention the entire time. Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of the newer cars have tighter security around CAN bus communication, so it may not be easy for Comma to continue to do their thing.
"The Comma 3 hands-free driving-assist technology is better than anything you can get from a legacy manufacturer." Pretty impressive. I keep following this device but I just don't drive enough to justify it right now.
After reading a description of the comma device and how it's being used it seems uncannily like how my Mach E drives. But also as both my first EV and my first semi self-driving car, perhaps I have a different set of standards. My TLDR was that the adaptive cruise control and automatic lane keeping extended my daily driving range by several hundred miles by reducing cognitive load significantly. It was the best 900 miles I've ever driven.
But watching people nitpick various variants of electric crossover SUVs, I realize I would probably like just about all of them because none of my cars have been anything like that up to now.
So I keyed in my other two cars to see if I could put the comma into it and alas I cannot. They are 2013 and 2016 models respectively.
Installation is not consumer friendly (though I'm sure any auto shop would happily install it), but functionality certainly is. My wife who is not particularly tech savvy has no problem using Comma.
I have a car that isn't even the best for Comma because of steering limits (Honda CRV), and on road trips I've been able to not touch the steering wheel or accelerator/brake for 30+ minutes on open stretches of the 101. You'd think it doesn't matter all that much, but it saves so much energy. A 4 hour drive feels like a 1 hour drive. Monitoring that the car is driving sensibly uses far less energy than actually driving.
And as you say, in bumper to bumper traffic it is just amazing. I was in a 2.5 (!) hour backup between LA and San Diego a few weeks ago and Comma did 99% of the driving. And the only times I had to take over were when other frustrated drivers were doing insane things out of boredom or anger that endangered me. Computers don't get frustrated or angry! The aggravation saved on that one trip paid for the cost.
Well, LKA would actually help to stay in lane while drunk, no?
That thing has a good default that is still overridable by the brute force (force that's less than the force needed to steer if the power assist fails altogether).
I've been using Openpilot in my 2018 Corolla for the past few months. Some takeaways:
It's mind-blowingly good. Easily on par with Autopilot (That is, Autopilot's ACTUAL capabilities, not what they show in marketing promos). For long highway trips, it's easy to go hours without a disengagement.
The full setup costs about $800, is completely plug-and-play, and you can order everything you need on the site (EON/Panda/Giraffe). See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfF9l2-orTk
There's a huge active community working on adding support for more cars and even custom forks with more advanced features like dynamic follow. Someone even recently got a VW bus working with it. https://discordapp.com/invite/avCJxEX
Also it's just really freaking cool to have a self driving Corolla. Can't stress how much this thing has changed the way I view driving and going places. It's no longer a pain, but a joy to sit in stop and go traffic. It's not perfect, but it's pushing the border of level 3 autonomy and far better than anything that any manufacturer besides Tesla is shipping.
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