Self-driving cars have become a reality because of 2-3 prominent universities in USA and Europe. It all started with a pioneering effort in 1984 by CMU labs at the Carnegie Mellon University. At around the same time period, European automakers and universities also got involved in Germany and Italy.
In 2004, after a lull in the space, interest in autonomous vehicles was renewed in the United States by the DARPA Grand Challenge, a million dollar prize competition funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. While none of the competitors who participated that year completed the course, 22 finalists completed the 11.78 mile course at the competition in 2005. The Stanford Racing Team won the challenge that year, in 2005, winning $2 million in prize money. Members of Stanford’s university racing team still play a key role in its future – notably, Sebastian Thrun later joined Google’s self-driving car division, and Zoox’s founder Jesse Levinson was also a part of the team.
As we’ve noted earlier, the self-driving car revolution is upon us, with many prominent tech and auto companies from across the world making investments and acquisitions in this space.
(Also see: Who’s Driving Investments and Acquisitions in Autonomous Vehicles?)
The following infograph lists out the key events in both USA and the rest of the world from the 1980s in this space.
