Project hacker Geohot, assembled unmanned vehicle in the garage, received millions of investments

Hacker George Hotz, whom most of us know under the nickname Geohot, assembled an unmanned vehicle in his garage last December. According to the creator and those who tested the novelty, the self-made autopilot works no worse than the Tesla autopilot. The Acura ILX sedan rides on the highway, fitting in the corners. The project itself started in October 2015, and already in December, the author trained the system to control the car, not only in normal but also in difficult conditions - for example, on roads with unobtrusive marking.

For the convenience of switching from pilot to offline mode, a joystick was added, the button of which activates the autopilot system. On the roof of this car is installed lidar.


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According to Hots, he is not too interested in money in this project, the greater interest is the opportunity to make a revolution in the transport sector.



About the money, most likely, true, since Geohot worked in Google, SpaceX, Facebook. The company Tesla Motors also offered him a job, promising bonuses the size of several million US dollars. Hacker refused, because he was going to develop his own project - which he did, in the end.


His Acura glove compartment is filled with such elements.

The automatic piloting system operates on the basis of a trained neural network, where GPU and six low-cost video cameras are used for data processing. Plus installed powerful Intel processors that form the basis of the computing unit of the system.

Interestingly, Tesla Motors has published an official response to the statement of Geohot about creating its own mobile car. In response, the company claims that the existence of such a project is extremely unlikely. “We consider it extremely unlikely that one person or even a small company that doesn’t have extensive engineering verification capabilities for systems can produce an autonomous piloting system suitable for mass-produced cars,” says Tesla Motors. “It can work as a limited demonstration on a certain stretch of road — Tesla had such a system two years ago — but it would require huge resources to debug millions of kilometers of very different roads.”

It seems that venture funds also believed in the Hotsa project. So, one of the most famous Silicon Valley foundations, Andreessen Horowitz, has invested $ 3.1 million in this project. Money is needed to hire a team of engineers who can turn a garage assembly into a unified product.



Hots founded his own company Comma.ai, which develops low-cost machine learning systems based on low-cost sensors. According to Geohot, he plans to bring the cost of the autonomous driving system to $ 1,000, which is quite acceptable for most buyers. Such systems can be installed on almost any car, expanding the capabilities of the car.