The road to fully autonomous vehicles

Houdina Radio Control showcases "American Wonder", the first radio guided car, in New York City. It was controlled through the exchange of radio signals with another car following it

General Motors tests its 1958 Chevrolet with pick-up coils to receive signals from the wires embedded in the road. The car drove itself by reacting to these signals

Chrysler comes out with Imperial, the first car with cruise control

Japan-based Sukuba Mechanical Engineering Laboratory demonstrates an autonomous car which processes images of the road. It has two cameras for image processing and uses analog computer technology to process signals and travels at a speed of 30 km/hr on a custom-made rail

An autonomous car, developed by Ernst Dickmanns at the Bundeswehr University, Munich, travels for 20 km at 90 km/hr. It was fitted with two cameras, eight 16-bit Intel microprocessors and other sensors

Dickmanns demonstrates another autonomous car in Paris. It drives through simulated traffic at 130 km/hr even taking decisions to change lanes

Dickmann's team drives an autonomous Mercedes S-class from Munich in Germany to Odense in Denmark.

Carnegie Mellon University demonstrates an autonomous car with a windshield-mounted camera and a GPS

Carnegie Mellon University's Tartan Racing Team wins the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's urban challenge of 60 miles with its autonomous car "Boss" in 4 hours and 10 minutes