
Ask HN: How to make a self-driving car? - jxub
In the light of the recent thread [1], I started to wonder about the knowledge, manufacturing processes, hardware and especially software involved in creating a self-driving car. Has anybody managed to build a functional prototype on his&#x2F;her own? I think we need bigger challenges in tech than creating another Uber&#x2F;FB&#x2F;Tinder clone.<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16600388
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goldenbeet
As ocdtrekkie mentions, the CommaAI is an option that offers a little hand
holding in the sense that instructions are available. I actually went through
the process of building one and hooking it up to my car and deciphering my
cars CAN bus messages. It's pretty interesting and would definitely recommend
it.

As for making your own, it depends on how good you want it to be. For example,
the CommaAI is simple to do even from scratch but not super cutting edge. On
the other hand theres companys out there using additional radars and Lidar
which increases the cost and complexity. But in theory you'd just need to
mount a machine in the trunk of your car, hook it up to your cars computer
(have a car capable of being controlled solely via computer), hook up any
additional sensors. Then write the software that can fuse all of the incoming
data and use it to send messages to the car.

If this is something you're interested in learning about you can check out
Udacity's SDC Nanodegree

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ocdtrekkie
George Hotz's comma.ai started as something he built in his garage. (From the
original video, you could see off-the-shelf stuff like AmazonBasics USB hubs
and all.)

Everything's open source, and if you want to build your own self-driving car,
probably start there. They're selling more or less all of the parts you need,
albeit in a very DIY fashion.

I think the most recent part they've started selling is something to more
directly interface with the car's accelerator pedals, for example.

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Someone
I wouldn’t let them loose on the road, but it is fairly easy nowadays to build
a rudimentary one. See for example
[http://www.donkeycar.com/](http://www.donkeycar.com/),
[https://makezine.com/projects/build-autonomous-rc-car-
raspbe...](https://makezine.com/projects/build-autonomous-rc-car-raspberry-
pi/), [https://zhengludwig.wordpress.com/projects/self-driving-
rc-c...](https://zhengludwig.wordpress.com/projects/self-driving-rc-car/).

The rest is a matter of scaling up, both in car size (easy) and in software
(lots of work)

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borkt
There are a number of tech companies building self driving cars. This isn't
the kind of challenge one would take on on their own, as you need hardware,
software, automotive, and many other specialties to handle this. Just vehicle
dynamics alone are important

