Depending on who you listen to, the self-driving (autonomous) car is either just around the corner or unlikely to be seen in our lifetime. Whilst the reality is probably somewhere in between, the media hype of late would give the impression that it is more ‘sooner’ than ‘later’. But is that really the case?
To start with, self-driving vehicles have been theorised and experimented with for longer than many people realise. For instance, Bel Geddes in his 1940 book Magic Highways suggested they would be reality by the 1960s!
Early experiments through the 1940s and ’50s were reliant on wires and signals embedded in the road. Unfortunately for these, traffic in the form of pedestrians and other non-connected moving (or even unexpectedly stationary) items provided an insurmountable issue. Camera vision-guided…
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Renew (Digital) - 1 Issue, 170 / Jan-Mar 2025