Driverless Cars Essay

This idea of autonomy has become more prevalent in society over the last few years, with the topic of driverless cars becoming more and more popular amongst the general public. This spike in popularity comes as companies, such as Google, make their work with autonomous vehicles more widespread, with their driverless cars even being tested on the roads, accumulating over one million miles on the streets of Mountain View, California, and Austin, Texas.1 Of course, as much as this idea has only begun to seriously develop within the past twenty years, self-driving vehicles have been a science fiction dream in the minds of many for a much longer time. In fact, experiments to develop autonomous cars began in the early 1920s, when Achen Motor Company created a …show more content…
PROMETHEUS, a project headed by major car manufacturers from six European countries, began in January of 1987 with the aim of finding a solution for inefficient transportation which is both harmful to the environment and incredibly unsafe.3 Through this project, Mercedes-Benz and Bundeswehr University Munich became pioneers for the autonomous vehicle industry, successfully building a driverless car.3 With the help of a number of electronics companies, universities, and other institutions, a component known as VITA was implemented into cars to work as cruise control while allowing cars to decelerate when a sensor recognised an object in front of the car which was moving slower than the car – or not at all. Even after the project terminated, this technology was applied when designing and manufacturing many subsequent Mercedes-Benz cars, thus implementing an AI component into the day to day workings of many cars around the world in an attempt to increase safety and save