Image credit – Chad McClymonds
Back when self-driving cars were in their early stages of development, iPhone jailbreaker and PlayStation hacker George Hotz came along and claimed to have come up with his own solution. Unfortunately back in October, Hotz announced that his project was effectively dead after he had decided to kill it after getting a letter from the NHTSA over safety concerns.
However it seems that it might not have been a complete waste of his time. Hotz has since announced that he will be giving away the software for free, which means that anyone who is interested in picking up where he left of, to improve on it further, or to apply it to their own projects, will be free to do so as the code and plans for the necessary hardware have been uploaded onto Github.
In case you’re unfamiliar with Hotz’s self-driving efforts, basically he claimed to have developed a system in which for about $1,000, you could effectively turn any car into a self-driving car, which would effectively kill the need for anyone to purchase a new car. However we should note that so far it only works on certain models of Acuras and Honda cars, and that to run the software, only the OnePlus 3 seems to be capable of it right now, which could further limit who can get their hands on it.
In any case we guess it remains to be seen what developers will do with Hotz’s technology, but for now it looks like it will be out there for the taking.
Filed in . Read more about Self-Driving Cars.