Aussie Uses Arduino Chips To Roboticize a Ford Focus

The hard part of getting cars to drive themselves is the last, niggling one percent of reliability. That’s the bit that has so far stymied even the tech giants and auto titans who are developing self-driving cars. But roboticizing the first 90-plus percent of driving is easy-peasey, as Keran McKenzie, of Melbourne, Australia, shows in his hack of a Ford Focus. He began by asking himself why the “home” button on the car can only let the driver plot a trip back home. Why not have it actually drive the car home as well? So he took out his car’s recessed ultrasound sensors (good for short-range work, like parking) and replaced them with five little cameras backed by the hacker’s friend, Arduino processors. Next, he hooked these up to a master processor situated at the back of the engine compartment. Then he piped some of the output into a display in the cabin, so he’d know how the system was working. Total cost, McKenzie says, was less than a grand, presumably in Australian dollars—the equivalent of about US $770. That’s not half bad for an IT guy whose main job is in automating workplace systems. It’s not even 10 percent bad. But it wasn’t quite good enough for use on a public road, as he learns about 10 seconds into his drive (at 3:00 in the following clip). Okay, so maybe McKenzie’s surprise is feigned, as if he meant to say, “Don’t try this at home, kids!”  Learn More Arduino Australia Ford Focus home button self-driving cars ultrasound IEEE Spectrum’s blog about the sensors, software, and systems that are making cars smarter, more entertaining, and ultimately, autonomous.Contact us:  p.ross@ieee.org Subscribe to RSS Feed Senior Editor Philip E. Ross New York City Assistant Editor Willie D. Jones New York City Senior Writer Evan Ackerman Berkeley, Calif. Contributor Lucas Laursen Madrid Sign up for the Cars That Think newsletter and get biweekly updates, all delivered directly to your inbox. Sign Up