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It's been a couple of months since I first tried out the Comet AI. A way of adding self-driving capabilities, or more like an advanced driving assist system, to your existing car using a little accessory that costs $1,000 and is not much more powerful than an old smartphone. This follow-up video is going to be a little bit different. Instead of evaluating the product, making notes, and reading a script to the camera, I'm just going to be live journaling my experiences daily driving this device. I'm really excited to see how this goes because it was a lot of fun getting our first impressions, but they've made some improvements since then and there's a huge difference between how cool something is to try and
how usable it is on a day-to-day basis. Me, I commute to and from work every day on the same predictable straight road. So, if this can make my boring commute a little easier, it could be a very compelling value. And so far, it's not going well. I forgot how to use it. I'm just driving manually right now. But I'm sure I'm going to figure everything out after I figure out how to tell you about our sponsor. Forgot how eerie it is. I'm in a construction zone right now, too. Like, if it manages to do this, I'm going to be pretty impressed. Oh, is it doing it?
Oh, it did it, dude. It did it. Okay. Got confused still. Wow. Disclaimer. You probably noticed that I've got the maximum speed set a little above the speed limit here, but don't cancel me just yet. Depending on the settings, the AI seems really reluctant to accelerate at all. So, this was my honestly not so successful attempt to get it to at least approach the speed limit. In this case, the actual speed I'm traveling is right here in the middle of the display. As you can see, quite a lot lower than what I had it set to. What the comma, this is more like our ideal driving situation. Straight line, consistent speed limit.
We don't got to do nothing. We just hang out. Something that's important to note about the Kama AI is that it doesn't have any kind of navigation. So, it has no awareness of where exactly it is you're trying to go. For that reason, I'm not going to count it not turning down to a side street as an intervention. I'm only going to count times when I want to continue going in a straight line. And for some reason, I have to do something, hit the brake, adjust my position in the lane, or whatever the case may be. I think their distracted driving detection has actually gotten a little bit more sensitive. I glanced down for like a second and it's like, "Hey yo, stop it.
There's a cop, which is fine. I'm not doing anything illegal." A lot of people expressed concern about that in the last test drive video. Not endangering anybody. I got I'm right here. I'm really impressed with how well it's drawing the edges of the lane here. Like, it seems like the camera can see better than my eyes can, which is not something I would usually say about the camera of a six-year-old cell phone. Still, so much of the performance of a smartphone camera is the processor. And we're stopped with no interventions there outside of having to get up to speed in the first place with the accelerator pedal. It was not fooled by a left arrow. Okay,
that's pretty cool. Oh, and we're out of the lane. See, that's how it go. The second I'm like, you know what? This seems like pretty good technology. Let's trust it. It's like, no, that's how you learn. To be clear, I checked. There was no one on the road. All right, first crack at the morning commute. Oh, we're going for this yellow. Woo! Spicy. I don't think technically that was illegal. We were pretty close to the intersection. You know, I haven't adjusted the driving profile for we had it in the most aggressive driving profile, but it seems like we're not there anymore because I'm maintaining really nice following distance from the cars in front of me. I might adjust that a little or might just appreciate having
the bigger buffer zone. This will be an interesting one. Here are my two lights to turn left. Here are the two that represent going straight. Let's see if it can figure this out. I doubt it. Oh. Oh. Okay. Now, let's see if it goes when it turns green. That's a negatory. Okay. Intervention. Okay. Now that we're started, she's following the lane, though. Steer left. Change lanes. Once safe. You better believe it. Oh, which lane are we going here? That was interesting. We chose the right lane. Not 100% sure why. That puts us in the position where we have to merge upcoming. Wa! It tried to turn right.
Okay, major intervention. We're going straight, buddy. They have two cameras. Did it like flip camera views there or something for a second there? Okay. Uh, yeah. Oh, intervention. It seemed like it recognized the yellow light, recognized that meant caution, and so it was slowing down, but it almost was slowing down as if maybe instead of turning red, it could turn green. So, I better not slow down too much, and we were not able to stop in time. This road that the LMD office is on is horrible. The visibility for human drivers is horrible. Yeah, it has absolutely no sense whatsoever of how much visibility we need to maintain that
speed. I have slowed down now. I set it to the more aggressive driving mode. So, let's see if it's a little less of a whimp. Whoa. What's this? Are we over the yellow line there, buddy? What are we doing, buddy? I said drive more aggressive. I didn't say drive all over the road. Jibus. Hey, which lane are you going to put me in here? Oh, you're just going to take me right down the middle. To be clear, I don't think this is because I'm in the more aggressive driving mode. I think this is because it's just being very dumb. All right. Can you see the yellow light? This crest at the top of the hill is a little bit interesting because I don't know if it has any way of knowing exactly where
this stop line is. Yeah, you can see it gets to the top. It's like, whoa, Nelly. And we're going right apparently. Intervention. We are not going right. Of course, it doesn't claim to be fully self-driving, but also then don't turn. You know, this will be a good test of the more aggressive profile to see if it stays on the accelerating car's tail a little bit more. Maybe a little, but it's kind of weird. It lets it get to a following distance and it's like, "Oh, okay. I'm going to keep up." rather than kind of smoothly maintaining an appropriate following distance. I don't really understand right now why we're
going 50 55 kilometers an hour though. I have it set to 65 and the car in front of me is way the freaking in front of me. My butt's getting rid right now because sure the speed limit might be 60, but that doesn't mean that people are going to drive oh 5560 to make sure they don't go over the speed limit. It's not how people drive here. Oh, we're slowing down really early. We're just hyper mileing. We're hyper mileing, guys. Don't get mad. You see these two guys like went around me. They're like, "This is irritating. Get out of my way." Time for our daily construction zone test. Is it going to
find its way through this? Is it going to find its way? It's breaking. Nope. It's only day two, so I can't tell why, but so far, it's actually more work for me to monitor the situation with the Kama AI than it would be for me to just operate the car myself. I can see that there would be situations where that wouldn't be the case, like stop and start traffic, but even then, I don't quite trust it. And in some ways, paying attention to what someone else is doing to make sure that they don't screw up is more work than just doing something that you've been doing for 23 years and just pressing the pedal and steering the wheel, you know? Like, why am I breaking right now? I got to go 35 km along the
highway to get to a volleyball tournament. This should be the comma's wheelhouse. Let's see how many inter Oh, I thought we were going to go to the right there. Let's see how many interventions we have. I'm using the janky cheap self-driving car. So far, I have not had to touch the steering wheel except to initiate a lane change since I got on the freeway or the gas or brake. It's nice, isn't it? It's pretty cool. It's better than yours. I know. I see so much potential and it's so exciting. That was incredible. I'm here in Abbottzford, 35 km down the freeway and zero interventions other than initiating
lane changes. Not one touch to the pedals whatsoever. Does it turn your non-self-driving car into a fully self-driving car? No, but it doesn't claim to. What it claims to do is blow the doors off of your advanced driver assist features that you already have. And it definitely does that. And this is the first time that I felt like there was less mental exertion for using the comma compared to, you know, monitoring it all the time when it's used the way it's intended. Man, is this thing ever cool. Uh, this is the first time showing my kids how it works. Green light. Ah, pretty cool, right? I mean, I hope not. Can it go faster than the speed limit by itself? Yes, I have it set to 70 right now. So, I control that here. And the
coolest part, this isn't like a fancy self-driving Tesla with a big computer in it or anything. It's just this little thing right here with a little camera on it and a little processor on it. How does it even move the wheel? Well, this car has rudimentary driver assists already. This just makes it smarter. It doesn't know where to go. It only goes in a straight line. If you combined this and Google Maps, could you have it drive you somewhere by itself? Right now, this doesn't have any support for navigation, but theoretically, yes. Does it mean?
I am not 100% sure. I think the red means that there's like an obstacle in front of you, and that's bad. But like white versus green, I'm not sure I understand. So, it knows when they're red. No, it just uses this camera so it can see what color things are. Yep. Wow. Better than a cat. Cats can't see the color. This is definitely better than having a cat drive my car. Yes. Does it work in the dark? It wouldn't work in complete blackness, but you have your headlights, so you're not going to have complete blackness.
Plus one to cats. Cats can see in the dark. Okay. Yeah, that would be an advantage for a cat driving your car. But the only advantage, I think. No, but there's another. If you have a cat driving your car, then it's super cute and fluffy. Okay, it would be cuter. Two advantages. That was interesting. That's the first time it's rolled backwards on a hill. I had to press the brake. Not because I think it wouldn't have stopped me eventually, but the car behind me is pretty close and it doesn't have any kind of proximity sensor at the back. That was a little spicy. Like 60. There we go. Go, go, go, buddy. Go, go, go. Oh
man, that's two interventions in like 1 minute. I really wish it would get up to speed a little quicker when there's no obstructions. After a couple interventions, though, I went the whole way down to Fraser Highway with no touches. When it works, it's so cool, man. Oh. Oh, yeah. Okay. Intervention. Just going to plow through that red light. Good stuff. Oh, yeah. No, it was going to go again. That's twice attempting to go through this red light, I reactivated. It just does not see it. That was interesting just now because the comma can clearly be trained to detect and react to lights. So, in the experimental mode that I'm using, it detects traffic lights sometimes, but the car in front
of me loaded the brake pedal, activating their brake lights, but they didn't really slow down, and I just kept pace with them. I would be interested to see them add the ability to start loading my brakes a little bit as soon as I see that brake light go because that way I don't have to wait to see how much that car is slowing down. I can be a little more proactive, you know? Look at that. One car length in front of me. Follows the rules of the road better than I do. Seriously, why? Oh, why are we slowing down, buddy? No intervention. We got a green light. We got an open road. What are we slowing down for, buddy? Now is
the time to go. but instead it's like stopping. Yeah, this is something that I worry about with just about any autonomous system. Their typical behavior when they don't know what to do is stop, which okay is intuitively a good thing to do and it's probably better than accelerating for instance. But stopping in some situations can be more dangerous than swerving or accelerating. And just shutting down when you're not sure what to do raises a lot of questions for me. Will it go around? Interesting. Oh. Oh, yeah. Wow. That was pretty impressive. All right. This is great. I've never been this excited to see morning rush hour traffic. This is exactly the kind of commute that I would hate to do without my comma AI. Okay, one thing it's already doing that I'm
not huge on is I've got it in aggressive driving mode, but it's leaving an enormous gap in front of me. Wow. All the way down the highway through all of that traffic. Zero interventions. Very cool. And I didn't even really feel like the way it was managing the throttle today was subpar. That good old Broadway sky train station. Spent many a time here. Zero fond memories. All right, back from my Asia trip and there's a new software update for the Kama AI. So, let's see what they've been cooking. One thing they haven't fixed is more aggressively accelerating. I'm set to 60 right now. I'm going 36 with nobody in front of me and no obstacles.
Green light, buddy. We're slowing down. I'm going to miss this green light because of this. Yep. Too late. I mean, that is kind of the nature of the beast with these kinds of always evolving products. You kind of get what you get from one week to the next, but like come on, man. Oh, that's right. It's the experimental mode that allows it to detect red lights and stuff like that. We going to start slowing down. Are we going to stop, buddy? Intervention. That was not good. Almost want the old version of the software back. Without experimental mode, it is functionally useless for any kind of city driving
because every single time that you have to stop for a red light or whatever, you have to press the brake pedal, which disengages the system and then you have to re-engage the system and then reset the speed. So, you end up doing so much manual intervention, you might as well just be operating the wheel and the pedals, which isn't the end of the world. It's not as good as what I was doing a couple of weeks ago. Let's see how the non-experimental node manages this construction site. Oh, yeah. Okay, we're just going to drive right into those pillars apparently. Maybe with a car to follow. That'll help. Oh, we are very close to that. Probably wouldn't have touched it, but I did grab the
wheel. Holy What is going on right now? Yeah, look at this. We accelerate quickly up to 40. And now I'm losing speed again. Hey, using the gas pedal myself. Are we going to manage to keep our speed this time? I don't know what's up with this. Now we can accelerate past 40, like 25 seconds later. Whoa. You should not be on the side of the road like that. That was crazy. And I don't know why I'm driving 50 right now when it's set to 90. Not loving this latest update. All right, this is my first drive during daytime with the new software. So, let's see if it handles accelerating a little bit better. Really freaking annoying. Set to 90 and it keeps going back down to 80 and I keep
having to stomp on the pedal and get it back up. It seems like overall it's just super conservative about speed compared to how it was before. Bloody go. We're not even at 60. Like I can't use it like this. And this isn't even a completely outlandish place for me to use it. Oh my god. This is a lot of following distance, guys. We can't have this much following distance in bumperto-bumper traffic. I'm going to have to wait for the next update before I can evaluate this anymore. Well, there's no update to address the maximum speed issue yet. Well, we just didn't start at a green, so that was cool. Am I creeping forward ever so slowly right now? I am. What the heck?
Wow, that was some pretty impressive path finding there, actually. Thank you. That was good timing. The thing is, while I did offer you a ride, what I didn't do is offer to drive you. Oh god. Hold on. All right. Radar cruise active. Set. Here we go. This road is so sketchy. Safe. Yeah, I do feel safe. Drifting a little bit. That was a little close. A little close to those cars. Yeah. But hey, the latest update makes it not go the speed that I set. So, we're Oh, perfect. going a very reasonable speed for this road.
All right, here we are. So, the latest software update on this thing has it kind of not driving all the way at the speed limit that I set. Um, but in terms of the lane keep, it's pretty cool. This can bolt on to not any car, but many cars that just have ADAS in them already. This is a it's an open project and uh a lot of really talented developers for little or no compensation, have built-in harnesses for many different vehicles, and it's a really cool project. Absolutely. So, you do have to tweak it for each vehicle. Mhm. But I don't have to as the user. I buy it and somebody kind of deals with it for me. If I had a long highway bumperto-bumper commute, this would save my sanity for sure. But it's not full
self-driving. I shouldn't even be using it here necessarily. So, I'll just turn that off. And by necessarily, you mean really you shouldn't be using it because it's illegal? No. As long as I'm here and I'm in control, it's legal. It's just not really the recommended use case for it. By the way, these guys are going to crap their pants if any of this footage sees the light of day and they see that I showed it to you. Sorry, I thought this guy was gonna maybe get off the road at some point. I'll try not to kill both tech businesses at the same time here today. We're back at it. We did not get the new comma hardware because
apparently there's a big backlog, but there's been at least one software update since the last time I used it. I got to say, even though I've had my issues with it. Oh, we're going backwards. Okay, I was just about to say I feel so much more comfortable. I just start rolling backwards on the hill just there. For all of its flaws, though, the Kama AI is one of the few products that I haven't had recently. And I was really thinking, man, really wish I had my Kama AI right now. I was sitting there driving a Tyan Turbo S going, man, I wish I had that Corolla right now just because of the Kama AI. Oh, does it know where to go? Nope. Totally doesn't.
Okay. I feel like it was better at this construction zone before. Nope. Super confused. I have to go around it myself. Okay, big test. Is it going to get me up to speed? I have it set to 80. We got there, but the acceleration is way too slow. I mean, look at this. You can see how many cars are piled up in the left lane and this giant empty space in the right lane where I just was slow. Hey, it's doing the thing. Coming up on the exit here on the right and I'm taking my sweet time. I'm set to 90, which I shouldn't be, but if I say 90, it means go 90. We're slowing down right now. We're breaking. Okay, forget it.
Forget this. You're You're done. You're off. Well, that's it. I give up on the experimental branch. I'm using the regular, AI branch. I really need them to have both of those things working at the same time to fully enjoy the product. My shirt's really wet from badminton. and I had no time to go home and change it. Anyway, shirtless or not, this drive out to Abbisford is a perfect example of what the Kama AI is just made for. Whether you're in experimental mode or not doesn't matter because there's no red lights and no stop signs and you just you're just chilling. You obviously have to be ready to take control at a moment's notice, but in terms of the cognitive load of being in the car and being driving, it's like
20% is pretty magic. I think today has finally cemented my overall conclusion on the Kama AI. How good of an experience you have with it is just going to come down to what your driving habits look like and what your expectations are like. If you expect this thing to be a magical full self-driving vehicle in the city or even the suburbs, you're probably not going to get much use out of it. But man, if I had a long highway commute, I would consider this essential equipment for my overall fatigue and health. And the coolest thing about it is just the fact that I'm sitting here in a Corolla. Look, ma, no hands. I didn't near the steering wheel. I'm ready to take over at a moment's notice. But having used it
this much in this scenario right now, I hate to use the T-word, but I trust it. It's It's been shockingly reliable. If KA AI looks like something you'd like to try, I'll get someone to stick a link to their supported vehicles list down in the description while I segue to our sponsor. Yes. Have you heard about Odo? No, it's business time when it's Odo today. What? What does that mean? It's got everything you need, Mr. Businessman. H look, I have frustrating software to deal with and you are being incredibly vague. Am I? Yes. really all you got to do is know you.
Yeah, he's got apps. Oh, okay. Literally every app you could want. Did you like this format? I wanted to try something new. Let us know in the comments. And also let us know in the comments if you'd like to see me try the same thing with a Model 3 or something with quote unquote full self-driving.
