openpilot

openpilot is an open source driver assistance system designed to run on the comma four hardware. It provides several Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) functions, including:

• Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC): Manages vehicle speed and following distance.
• Automated Lane Centering (ALC): Assists with steering to keep the vehicle in its lane.
• Forward Collision Warning (FCW): Alerts the driver to potential frontal collisions.
• Lane Departure Warning (LDW): Alerts the driver if the vehicle drifts from its lane.
• Driver Monitoring (DM): A camera-based feature that alerts distracted or asleep drivers while the system is engaged.

openpilot works by utilizing the car's existing APIs for its built-in ADAS systems, providing improved acceleration, braking, and steering inputs compared to stock systems.

The tools/ directory contains various utilities for development, analysis, and simulation. Key subdirectories include:

• cabana/: View and plot CAN messages from drives or in realtime.
• camerastream/: Stream camera data over the network.
• joystick/: Control your car using a joystick.
• lib/: Libraries supporting tools and reading openpilot logs.
• plotjuggler/: Tool for plotting openpilot logs.
• replay/: Replay recorded drives and mock openpilot services.
• sim/: Run openpilot within a simulator.

Other relevant directories in the root include:

• car_porting/: Tools for porting new cars.
• release/: Scripts for building openpilot releases.
• scripts/: Miscellaneous scripts.

The joystick_control.py tool allows you to connect a laptop to a comma device over a network to debug vehicle controls using a joystick or keyboard.

Prerequisites:

• The car must be off.
• openpilot must be offroad.
• Hardware: A device running openpilot, a laptop, and an optional joystick.

joystick_control uses the inputs Python library, which supports many common gamepads and joysticks.

By default, openpilot uploads driving data to comma servers to train models and improve the software.

Data logged includes:

• Road-facing cameras
• CAN bus data
• GPS, IMU, magnetometer, and thermal sensors
• Crashes and operating system logs

Privacy Notes:

• Driver-facing camera and microphone: These are only logged if you explicitly opt-in via settings.
• Opt-out: Users can disable data collection if they wish.
• Data Access: You can access your data through comma connect.

When defining or modifying cereal messages, follow these rules to ensure data quality and usability:

• Use SI units: All fields must describe quantities in SI units unless the field name explicitly specifies otherwise.
• Unambiguous naming: Field names must be completely unambiguous within their context.
• Human-readability: Values should be easy to plot and human-readable with minimal parsing.

To ensure old logs can be parsed by new versions of cereal, follow these rules for modifying the messaging spec:

• Safe changes: Adding new structs or adding new members to existing structs is generally safe.
• Unsafe changes: Most other modifications (like changing existing field types or IDs) will break compatibility.
• Reference: For detailed Cap'n proto compatibility rules, see Cap'n proto documentation.