I Radio Controlled My Smart Car

Superfast Matt is supported by:

[stanceworks]

Driving your RC car from the passenger seat is such an absurd scenario. I love it.

[paulheitkemper]

Using the RC controller from inside the car is really just fly-by-wire. Your engineering is on par with AirBus!

[darwinskeeper]

Yep, another interesting but impractical idea that was presented in the silliest way possible. Totally on brand for this channel.

[darkwinter]

Actual use case: making movies. A number of Hollywood blockbusters have featured stunts partially or completely done with RC-modified full-size cars.

[NotSean]

This man will do literally ANYTHING to not finish any of his other projects...

and I'm totally here for it!

[LongPeter]

Accelorator: use a drive by wire throttle body. If it is a cable throttle or you don’t want to figure out the programming, put your servo in the engine bay and disconnect the pedal. Put a weaker return spring on the throttle assembly if needed.

Steering: use an electric power steering rack instead of stuffing about with the wheel. Take the steering wheel off when it isn’t needed so the steering motor isn’t fighting a flywheel.

[Jarrett]

Your vanity plates had me and the wife absolutely in tears. We love you guys' sense of humor and, lets be honest, maturity level too 😂😂

[Jehty_]

So.. I had an RC semi truck with trailer as a kid.
I'm not saying that you should convert a real semi-truck into RC, but I'm also not saying that you shouldn't.

[mitsuman]

RC car nerd here. The throttle servo issue might be fixed by setting separate endpoints. It looked like when you put the brakes on, the throttle servo was trying to pull up on the pedal past the neutral point when it was making the grinding noise. So you'd want the endpoint for the throttle servo to be set to zero in that direction.

I'm sure you're smart enough to realize this, I just want to pretend like I'm involved. Great video, all hail the algorithm.

[chexo]

If you can get a slightly newer used car (look for one that’s not running but might be a simple fix) with ADAS, you can apparently connect to the CAN bus and send your own ADAS commands to steer, accelerate, and brake. Instead of building a contraption to operate the controls you can just use what the car’s cruise control or auto emergency brake would use.

[CajunGreenMan]

I was a remote heavy equipment operator. The way we managed that was plugging into the ECM directly, then operating the controls from there, rather than mechanical devices on the controls. There are plenty of hackers who working directly with the ECMs who could show you how to do that. Keep up the great work!

[geoffreystearns]

One of my first assignments just out of engineering college, was radio controlling surplus aviation rescue boats (about the size of a PT boat) to use them as training targets for missiles shot from US Navy aircraft. No fun like making something big behave like a toy!

[malvoliosf]

I need to watch a full-sized RC car get big air off a ramp more than I need food or water.

[TheSalamander]

The amount of fun you guys were having is completely obvious and absolutely makes the video 1000x better. All hail the algorithm

[BarrettCharlebois]

SuperfastMatt living out all of our childhood “wouldn’t it be cool if…” type dreams

[mxskelly]

Reminds me of all the times Mythbusters RC-ified full sized cars to do dangerous car myths, that was one of my favorite parts of the show

[nshep]

You could probably wire throttle control directly to the petal position sensor and feeding it back the signal/resistance it’s looking for. That way you get away from the mechanical movement and get more precise control.

[gustavcarl]

glad to see you are doing well. Was worried after the fires!

[nbist]

I thought I had some how missed months maybe even years worth of content seeing a finished build but not remembering seeing any build progress videos for the project.

[signorovitch]

I would use a solenoid for the pedals; they don’t take continuous power to keep down and are already moving linearly like the pedal