Self-driving cars were anticipated by experiments in radio control during the 1920s, and the development of advanced driver assistance (ADAS) after WWII. Trials of self-driving vehicles began in the 1950s with the first semi-autonomous car developed in 1977 by Japan's Tsukuba Mechanical Engineering Laboratory.

In the United States, Carnegie Mellon University's Navlab began semi-autonomous vehicle projects in 1984, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In Europe, similar projects were led by Mercedes-Benz and the University of the Bundeswehr Munich's EUREKA Prometheus Project, beginning in 1987.

The United States allocated US$650 million in 1991 for research on the National Automated Highway System, which demonstrated automated driving combining highway-embedded automation with vehicle technology. Until the second DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005, automated vehicle research in the United States was primarily funded by DARPA, the US Army and the US Navy, producing incremental advances in speed, driving competence, control, and sensor systems.

Since then, numerous private companies and both private and public research organizations around the world have developed working autonomous vehicles. In 2015, the Cruise subsidiary of General Motors began road testing in California. Two years later, Waymo was the first to commercialize a robotaxi service in Phoenix, Arizona, followed by a similar service by DeepRoute.ai in Shenzhen. Cruise later shut down in 2024, with several other manufacturers scaling back plans for self-driving technology in 2022, including Ford and Volkswagen due to misgivings about commercial viability.

Legal and regulatory developments to accommodate the testing and facilitation of self-driving vehicles have also taken place worldwide. In the 2010s and 2020s, some UNECE and EU members developed rules and regulations related to automated vehicles, with various cities planning to operate transport systems for driverless cars and to allow testing of robotic cars in traffic. In 2016, the US National Economic Council and US Department of Transportation (USDOT) released the Federal Automated Vehicles Policy. The first known fatal accident involving a vehicle being driven by itself took place in Williston, Florida, in 2016, while the first reported pedestrian killed by a self-driving car was in 2018.

From the 2010s, increasingly rapid progress in research and development has taken place, often accompanied by inaccurate predictions of complete autonomy, which capability is confined to driverless taxi services in designated cities. As of early 2024, several manufacturers sell cars with automated driving systems in the US, Japan, Europe, and China.

History

1920s In July 1925, Houdina Radio Control first demonstrated the radio-controlled "American Wonder" on New York City streets. The car was a 1926 Chandler that was equipped with a transmitting antenna on the tonneau and was operated by a person in another car that followed it. The radio-controlled car "barely missed trucks, automobiles, and a milk wagon, finally crashing into a sedan." In January 1927, after namesake Houdina reportedly left Indianapolis without paying some of his workers, a story was circulated that the "radio control" was actually being done by a person hidden in the car.

Reports of demonstrations of a "phantom motor car" or "phantom auto" in December 1926 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and in June 1932 in Fredericksburg, Virginia, do not mention Houdina (the person or the company), although the described capabilities of the car were consistent with the Houdina vehicle.

1930s An early depiction of automated guided cars was Norman Bel Geddes's Futurama exhibit sponsored by General Motors at the 1939 World's Fair, which showed radio-controlled electric cars propelled by electromagnetic fields generated by circuits embedded in the roadway.O'Toole (2009) pp. 189-192

Bel Geddes later outlined his vision in his book Magic Motorways (1940), promoting advances in highway design and transportation, foreshadowing the Interstate Highway System, and arguing that humans should be removed from the process of driving. Bel Geddes predicted that these advances would be a reality in 1960. Magic motorways by Norman Bel Geddes, 1940. Full text, pages 43 to 56. Quote: "But these cars of 1960 and the highways on which they drive will have in them devices which will correct the faults of human beings as drivers. They will prevent the driver from committing errors. They will make it possible for him to proceed at full speed through dense fog."

1940s Development of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) began after WWII, with the first such system being cruise control, invented in 1948. Subsequent technologies such as Forward Collision Warning (FCW) and Lane Departure Warning (LDW) formed part of the definition of self-driving vehicles in later years.

1950s In 1953, RCA Labs successfully created a system with a miniature car guided and controlled by wires laid in a pattern on a laboratory floor. The system sparked the imagination of Leland M. Hancock, traffic engineer in the Nebraska Department of Roads, and of his director, L. N. Ress, state engineer. The decision was made to experiment with the system in actual highway installations.

In 1957, a full-size system was successfully demonstrated by RCA Labs and the State of Nebraska on a 400-foot strip of public highway at the intersection of U.S. Route 77 and Nebraska Highway 2, then just outside Lincoln, Nebraska. A series of experimental detector circuits buried in the pavement was paired with a series of lights along the road's edge. The detector circuits were able to send impulses to guide the car and determine the presence and velocity of any metallic vehicle on its surface. A previous test installation of the system in September 1954 along U.S. Route 73 and U.S. Route 75 in Cass County, Nebraska, was utilized as an experimental traffic counter. It was developed in collaboration with General Motors, who provided two standard car models with equipment consisting of special radio receivers and audible and visual warning devices that were able to simulate automatic steering, acceleration, and brake control.

It was further demonstrated on 5 June 1960, at RCA Lab's headquarters in Princeton, New Jersey, where reporters were allowed to "drive" the cars. Commercialization of the system was expected to happen by 1975.

In addition, during the 1950s and throughout the 1960s, General Motors showcased its Firebirds, a series of experimental cars that were described as having an "electronic guide system [that] can rush it over an automatic highway while the driver relaxes."

Radar Assistance Systems, also with emergency brake functionality, were introduced in concept cars by major companies in the 1950s. Ford had Radar in the FX Atomos concept car with visualized information on a "Roadarscope". In 1959, GM demonstrated the brake assist in a Cadillac Cyclone.

1960s In 1960, Ohio State University's Communication and Control Systems Laboratory launched a project to develop driverless cars that were activated by electronic devices embedded in the roadway. Head of the project, Dr. Robert L. Cosgriff, claimed in 1966 that the system could be ready for installation on a public road in 15 years.

In the early 1960s, the Bureau of Public Roads considered the construction of an experimental electronically controlled highway. Four states – Ohio, Massachusetts, New York, and California – were bidding for the construction. In August 1961, Popular Science reported on the Aeromobile 35B, an air-cushion vehicle (ACV) that was invented by William Bertelsen and was envisioned to revolutionize the transportation system, with personal self-driving hovering cars that could speed up to .

During the 1960s, the United Kingdom's Transport and Road Research Laboratory tested a driverless Citroen DS that interacted with magnetic cables that were embedded in the road. It went through a test track at without deviation of speed or direction in any weather conditions, and in a far more effective way than by human control.

1970s Research continued in the 1970s with cruise control devices activated by signals in the cabling beneath the tracks. According to cost-benefit analyses that were made, adoption of system on the British motorways would be repaid by end of the century, increase the road capacity by at least 50% and prevent around 40% of the accidents. Funding for these experiments was withdrawn by the mid-1970s.

Also, during the 1960s and the 1970s, Bendix Corporation developed and tested driverless cars that were powered and controlled by buried cables, with wayside communicators relaying computer messages. Stanford University demonstrated its Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Cart, a small wheeled robot that once accidentally navigated onto a nearby road.

Preliminary research into the intelligent automated logic required for autonomous cars was conducted at the Coordinated Science Laboratory of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the early to mid-1970s.Biss, K., Chien, R.T., Stahl, F.A., Weissman, S., "Semantic Modeling for Deductive Question-Answering Systems", IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTERS, C-25(4):358 - 366, APRIL 1976

In 1977, the first self-driving car that operated independently of wires under the road was designed by the Japanese Tsukuba Mechanical Engineering Laboratory. It travelled at speeds up to and used two video cameras to visually detect street markings.

1980s In the 1980s, a vision-guided Mercedes-Benz robotic van, designed by Ernst Dickmanns and his team at Munich's University of the Bundeswehr Munich in Germany, achieved a speed of on streets without traffic. Subsequently, intergovernmental organisation Eureka conducted the Prometheus Project on autonomous vehicles from 1987 to 1995.

In the same decade, the DARPA-funded Autonomous Land Vehicle (ALV) project in the United States made use of new technologies developed by the University of Maryland, Carnegie Mellon University, the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, Martin Marietta, and SRI International. The ALVINN (An Autonomous Land Vehicle in a Neural Network) project achieved the first road-following demonstration that used lidar, computer vision, and autonomous robotic control to direct a robotic vehicle at speeds of up to .

In 1987, HRL Laboratories (formerly Hughes Research Labs) demonstrated the first off-road map and sensor-based autonomous navigation on the ALV. The vehicle traveled over at on complex terrain with steep slopes, ravines, large rocks, and vegetation. By 1989, the Navlab of Carnegie Mellon University had pioneered the use of neural networks to steer and otherwise control autonomous vehicles, forming the basis of contemporary control strategies.

1990s