As the race to Autonomous vehicles is increasing day by day with big companies launching their products with innovative ideas and benefits, for example, Aurora, one of the largest auto-components makers, is expected to double its vehicle sales to $1 billion by 2020. But how the concept of driverless cars was generated and came into existence.
As per the researcher, the concept got its first glimpse in the 1939 World Fair where it was envisioned as “abundant sunshine fresh air and fine green parkways upon which cars would drive themselves” by General Motor’s Futurama.
The vision was made materialized and conceptualized in the year 1950 by partnering with RCA and an automated scale mode highway system was developed to allow the beginning of experimenting that how steering could be functionalized with electronics and a proper distance can be maintained.
Even though it was an enchanting vision but was not seen as encouragement until the U.S. Department of Defense’s research branch, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) conducted a self-navigated competition in 2004, across 150 miles (ca. 241 km) of the desert.
Hence, the initiative resulted in a platform for many universities and corporations to showcase their innovation and creation for a cash prize where vehicles with advanced functions without any human control can be performed. The cars failed to finish the DARPA’s 2004 course but in the 2007 competition, the simulation of 60 miles (ca. 97 km) of urban terrain was completed by four cars.
The winner of the competition got an opportunity to be hired by Google for its own driverless navigation program.
Source:- Elizabeth Arentz, Driving Miss Lazy