George Hotz, better known under the name of Geohot, has been busy with the build of an autonomous car. He does this with cheap, commercially available equipment and homemade software running on an Ubuntu machine.
Hotz knew as a first in 2007, an iPhone unlock if 17-year-old, which makes the phone on other networks than AT&T to use. Later, he was the first one that is deeper in the PlayStation 3 managed to get. Now he is hoping to be the first with his own artificial-intelligentiesoftware the Israeli company Mobileye can beat. Mobileye is a supplier of technology for ‘driver assist’ in the cars of, among others, Tesla, BMW, Ford and General Motors. He seems convinced of his ability, evident from an interview that Hotz gave to Bloomberg Business. In the accompanying video more than six minutes indicates Hotz in any case little token of appreciation for the current state of the art. There, he also has good reason: he began to develop his system in October.
Hotz admits that he the technology of Mobileye with simple, readily available electronics want to beat and with its own system of artificial intelligence. He thinks that his system for a thousand dollars ready. Then there is a system of six cameras that are in mobile phones. Two near the rear-view mirror, a rear, two on the sides to the blind corner to see a fish-eye camera on top. Also, his system does not use the pre-programmed ideas of programmers about how a car should drive. All the system knows, it has learned of ‘ride along’ with Hotz in his Acura ILX.
That system, he managed to get together by themselves as an employee to sell a Honda garage, so the schematics and manuals of the car to be able to download. Not much later, he rested his own car with an Intel RACK, a couple of gps devices and a joystick for the operation. He closed the whole thing to the on-board computer of the car and stuck a lidar on the roof.
He wants about not too long of a time, a Tesla model S beating on the Interstate 405 to prove that its technology is better than that of Tesla. If he is successful, he wins a bet he has with Elon Musk, that to him all the millions offered to Tesla to get started, something that Holz declined. Allegedly, he would have said that the supply of Musk kindly found, but that he is not looking for a job.
Interview George Hotz by Bloomberg