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Gagan Kadam

Posted on Oct 11

TouchGasPedal⛽ : Touch Grass by Touching the Gas Pedal

#devchallenge #hf26challenge

This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge: Week 1 — Touch Grass.

🌿 What I Built

Most modern AI applications share an unspoken goal: maximize screen time. Whether it’s endless back-and-forth chat prompts, AI image galleries, or automated feed generators, the user remains tethered to a digital screen.

TouchGasPedal inverts that paradigm.

TouchGasPedal is an open-source, AI-powered driving route discovery web application built with Google's open-weight Gemma model. It helps you disconnect from digital feeds by planning unforgettable, real-world scenic and peaceful drives:

Pick your vibe: Peaceful & Relaxing, Scenic & Beautiful, City Cruise, Adventure & Thrilling, Night Drive, or Foodie Run.
Set your time window: 30 min, 1 hour, 2 hours, or 3+ hours.
Set your starting point: Type any neighborhood or click the auto-locate button.
Get your curated adventure: Gemma generates a custom route with curated natural/scenic overlooks, roadside stops, time-of-day recommendations, a music vibe, and real-world micro-challenges (e.g., "Find the highest viewpoint bench and sit for 5 minutes without touching your phone").
One-tap Google Maps handoff: Tap Start Navigation, mount your phone on the dashboard, roll the windows down, and drive.

Screen time: < 60 seconds.

Real-world exploration: 1 to 3+ hours.

🚀 Live Demo & Repository

GitHub Repository: markdown
grkadam7 / TouchGasPedal
⛽ TouchGasPedal

Touch Grass by touching the gas pedal.
An open-source driving route curator powered by Google's open-weight Gemma model, built for the Hacktoberfest 2026 "Touch Grass" DEV Challenge.

🌿 Why "TouchGasPedal"? (The Touch Grass Philosophy)

Most AI apps keep you glued to your phone screen: chatting back and forth, generating infinite feeds, or optimizing digital workflows.

TouchGasPedal does the opposite.

Time on screen: Under 60 seconds (pick your mood, pick duration, get route).

Time in the real world: 1 to 3+ hours outside exploring scenic overlooks, quiet country roads, local tea shacks, and mountain curves.

Once your route is generated, tap Start Navigation, mount your phone on the dashboard, roll the windows down, and go.

✨ Features

🎭 Mood-Based Curation: Choose from Peaceful, Scenic, City Cruise, Adventure, Night Drive, or Foodie Run.

⏱️ Flexible Time Windows: From quick 30-minute stress-busters to…
View on GitHub
(Permissive MIT License)
Live Demo / Walkthrough: https://touchgaspedal.onrender.com

🧠 Why Open Innovation Matters (Why Gemma?)

For an application that actively encourages people to unplug and venture into the physical world, relying on closed, proprietary cloud black-boxes presents critical limitations:

Local & Trail-Ready Inferences: Drivers frequently venture into rural valleys, national parks, and mountain passes where cellular data drops to zero. Open-weight models like Gemma can be executed on-device or on local edge hardware inside vehicles without an active internet connection.
Zero Surveillance & Geolocation Privacy: Your driving habits, physical whereabouts, and spontaneous routes should remain your own. Open-weight AI ensures users don't have to surrender personal telemetry and location footprints to proprietary advertising trackers.
Community-Curated Route Knowledge: Because Gemma is open-weight, local driving clubs, off-road communities, and biking groups can fine-tune custom LoRA adapters on local trail knowledge without permission or platform lock-in.

🛠️ Architecture & Technical Execution

                     ┌─────────────────────────────┐
                     │   Browser (Minimal UI)      │
                     │  Vibe • Duration • Geolocation
                     └──────────────┬──────────────┘
                                    │ POST /api/suggest-drive
                                    ▼
                     ┌─────────────────────────────┐
                     │     Node / Express API      │
                     └──────────────┬──────────────┘
                                    │
             ┌──────────────────────┴──────────────────────┐
             │                                             │
             ▼                                             ▼
┌───────────────────────────┐                ┌───────────────────────────┐
│ Gemma 4 Open-Weight Model │                │ Google Maps Hand-Off API  │
│ (Route & Stop Reasoning)  │                │ (Turn-by-turn Navigation) │
└───────────────────────────┘                └───────────────────────────┘

Frontend: Vanilla HTML5, CSS3 (Nature-inspired dark theme), and vanilla JavaScript for ultra-lightweight, instantaneous mobile performance.
Backend: Node.js + Express.js API.
Model Orchestration: Google Gemma open-weight models (gemma-4-26b-a4b-it / gemma-4-31b-it) via @google/generative-ai with robust fallback to gemini-2.5-flash.
Geocoding: OpenStreetMap / Nominatim API (fully aligned with the open-data ecosystem).
Navigation Handoff: Universal Google Maps Intent URLs.

📸 Screenshots & Experience

🎯 Partner & Featured Track Entries

This project is submitted to two prize tracks:

Best Use of Gemma ($200): Leverages Google's lightweight, open-weight models for fast local/offline-ready driving route synthesis and real-world exploration challenges.
Best Use of Render ($200): Includes an infrastructure-as-code render.yaml blueprint enabling 1-click cloud deployments on Render's free web service tier.

🏁 Conclusion

"Touch Grass" doesn't have to mean sitting idle on your lawn — sometimes the best way to clear your head and reconnect with the physical world is to turn the ignition, play some lo-fi beats, and follow a winding road.

Mount your phone, roll down the windows, and TouchGasPedal. ⛽🚗💨

What is your absolute favorite scenic driving route or road trip playlist? Let me know in the comments below

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