Q. How far can you go with DIY projects?

A. You can build a self-driving car, all by yourself in about a month.

Unbelievable, you may say, but San Fransisco based 26 years old hacker, George Hotz has done it. George Hotz is no ordinary hacker by the way. He was the first one to hack the iPhone for network lock. He was also sued by Sony for hacking Play Station. He has won a number of hacking contests.

It took George an Acura ILX outfitted with a laser-based radar (lidar) system on the roof and a camera mounted near the rearview mirror along with code running on Ubuntu Linux to build this self-driving car. The whole set-up, barring the car, costs less than $1000. In fact, George plans to sell the “

The whole set-up, barring the car, costs less than $1000. In fact, George plans to sell the “self-driving kit” (hardware plus software), so that any car could be converted to self-driving car.

The software for this self driving mechanism is just around 2,000 lines, George told. The control software is a type of self-teaching artificial-intelligence mechanism that grabs data from drivers and learns from their choices.

The project is being worked under George’s upcoming artificial intelligence company comma.ai.

You can read the whole story at Bloomberg.

Picture credit: Bloomberg