Drive your car with your iPhone or laptop

Jacqueline DiOrio 14 Nov, 2009 at 11:34pm ET Article published in Tech

The scientists over at Waterloo Labs have done the seemingly impossible: they’ve formulated a way that you can drive your car with your iPhone or laptop.

The team created a mechanical device that sits on the floor of the car to operate the pedals, and to control steering through signals sent from a specially-created iPhone application, or a program on a laptop.

The venture is certainly impressive, made more so by the fact that the group has made a series of Youtube videos that tell you exactly how to do it. Even so, this isn’t something I would try at home.

You can see the how to guide here, and check out the introductory video below. (007 did this years ago -ed.)

Comments

14 Nov 2009 ~ 11:49pm lordbean 007 may have done it years ago, but the Mythbusters did it for real long before these guys. I'd also be really surprised if the mythbusters were the first people to ever rig up a remote control system for a car.

edited for lots of context problems.
14 Nov 2009 ~ 11:53pm GnomeQueen I thought the novelty was less that they were remote controlling the car, and more that they were doing it with a smart phone.
15 Nov 2009 ~ 12:01am lordbean The fact that they've written an application for their phone that allows them to do that is interesting, but honestly it's not hard to see where they got the idea. Mythbusters remote-controlled car uses a radio controller... Cell phone is just a programmable radio...
15 Nov 2009 ~ 12:12am GnomeQueen You make a good point, but I still think it's interesting, if very impractical. I will not be driving my car with my phone, that's for sure....especially considering it's a dumb phone.
15 Nov 2009 ~ 9:06am photodude I can't wait to see the guys at mythbusters play with this via the iPhone app
15 Nov 2009 ~ 11:47am wax wait is he driving it with an iphone 2g? WEAK!
15 Nov 2009 ~ 12:23pm drasnor This is essentially how we rigged up the drive-by-wire system for my university's autonomous ground vehicle platform. I think these guys spent less money than we did though .

-drasnor