Self Driving Like it’s 1993

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In a stunning example of the Bader Meinhoff effect, we’ve recently heard several times this week about events like the “carbage run.” That is, a motoring event where you can only buy some garbage car to compete. In the case of [Robbe Derks], the idea was to take a six-day journey to the polar circle in a car. But not just any car. It had to be at least 20 years old and cost less than €1000. That wasn’t hard enough for [Robbe] and friends. They also decided to make the car self-driving.

If you have a car that is new enough, this might not be as hard as it sounds. The OpenPilot project adds L2 self-driving features to about 275 car models. But probably not a 20-year-old junker or, in particular, a 1993 Volvo 940. [Robbe] took up the challenge and is doing a series of blog posts covering how it all worked.

Most (or maybe all) cars in 1993 didn’t have actuators for remote steering, so the car needed a transplant from a 2020 Toyota Corolla part. Adaptive cruise control also needed some help in the brake system. Add an accelerator servo and an optional radar sensor and you are almost ready to go.

We are waiting for more blog posts to tell us just how close to ready you are at that point. But even the first post has a lot of cool car info. It won’t be a weekend project to duplicate, but it does have a certain cool factor.

Now add a decidedly non-1993 Android phone… If you want to start with something less complex, maybe settle for driving assistance only in certain conditions.



from Blog – Hackaday https://ift.tt/SBUJmco

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