History of autonomous cars

Experiments have been conducted on automating cars since at least the 1920s; promising trials took place in the 1950s and work has proceeded since then. The first self-sufficient and truly autonomous cars appeared in the 1980s, with Carnegie Mellon University's Navlab and ALV projects in 1984 and Mercedes-Benz and Bundeswehr University Munich's Eureka Prometheus Project in 1987. Since then, numerous major companies and research organizations have developed working prototype autonomous vehicles including Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Continental Automotive Systems, Autoliv Inc., Bosch, Nissan, Toyota, Audi, Volvo, Vislab from University of Parma, Oxford University and Google. In July 2013, Vislab demonstrated BRAiVE, a vehicle that moved autonomously on a mixed traffic route open to public traffic.

As of 2013, four U.S. states have passed laws permitting autonomous cars: Nevada, Florida, California, and Michigan. In Europe, cities in Belgium, France, Italy and the UK are planning to operate transport systems for driverless cars, and Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain have allowed testing robotic cars in traffic.

In 1925, Houdina Radio Control demonstrated the radio-controlled driverless car "linrrican Wonder" on New York City streets, traveling up Broadway and down Fifth Avenue through the thick of the traffic jam. The linrrican Wonder was a 1926 Chandler that was equipped with a transmitting antennae on the tonneau and was operated by a second car that followed it and sent out radio impulses which were caught by the transmitting antennae. The antennae introduced the signals to circuit-breakers which operated small electric motors that directed every movement of the car.

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