Autonomous vehicles
AI milestones in autonomous vehicles, part of robotics and autonomy.
9 milestones
Waymo One Launches Fully Driverless Rides to the General Public in Phoenix, Arizona
On 8 October 2020, Waymo opened its Waymo One ride-hailing service to the general public in the greater Phoenix, Arizona area, operating without a safety driver in the vehicle, the first time a commercial autonomous vehicle service had done so at public scale.
Waymo One Commercial Ride-Hailing Service Launch
In December 2018, Waymo LLC launched Waymo One, a fare-charging autonomous ride-hailing service operating in the Greater Phoenix, Arizona area, marking the first time a driverless vehicle service had been made available to paying members of the public in the United States.
Stanford Racing Team's Stanley Wins DARPA Grand Challenge 2005
On 8 October 2005, a Stanford University team led by Sebastian Thrun entered Stanley, a modified Volkswagen Touareg, in the DARPA Grand Challenge. Stanley completed the 131.6-mile (211.8 km) Mojave Desert course autonomously in under 7 hours, finishing first and winning the $2 million prize.
ALVINN: An Autonomous Land Vehicle in a Neural Network, Developed by Dean Pomerleau at CMU
In 1989, Dean Pomerleau at Carnegie Mellon University published ALVINN (Autonomous Land Vehicle in a Neural Network), a three-layer backpropagation network trained on road images that steered the CMU Navlab vehicle autonomously, demonstrating that a neural network could learn driving behaviour directly from sensor data.
Ernst Dickmanns and VaMoRs Autonomous Van Test, Bundeswehr University Munich
In 1986, Ernst Dickmanns and colleagues at Bundeswehr University Munich demonstrated VaMoRs, a Mercedes-Benz van retrofitted with cameras and real-time computer vision, capable of autonomous driving on traffic-free roads at speeds up to approximately 96 km/h, marking one of the earliest working autonomous vehicle demonstrations.
Stanford Cart Slider Modification by Hans Moravec
During the late 1970s, Hans Moravec at Stanford University extended the Stanford Cart, originally built by James L. Adams in the 1960s, with a sliding camera mount, enabling the robot to navigate autonomously across a chair-filled room in 1979 using stereo vision, a milestone in autonomous vehicle research.
Stanford Cart Road-Following Experiment Under Les Earnest
In late 1971, Les Earnest at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory adapted the Stanford Cart for autonomous road-following, using a television camera and a low-power radio control link to guide the vehicle along a road at approximately 0.8 mph (1.3 kph).
Stanford Cart Radio-Link Configuration (1963)
In September 1963, researchers at Stanford University fitted the Stanford Cart with an analogue computer and radio-control links, allowing a remote operator to steer the vehicle using a television camera feed and a displayed target dot, in an early attempt at closed-loop vision-guided vehicle control.
Stanford Cart (Cable-Controlled Version)
In 1961, James L. Adams at Stanford University built the first version of the Stanford Cart, a four-wheeled vehicle tethered by cable to a remote console and television monitor, to investigate video-guided remote control. Tests showed the Cart could not operate reliably above approximately 0.2 mph owing to communication delays introduced by the cable link.