When was the first self driving car made

The prospect of autonomous cars may still seem impossibly futuristic. Their coming debut will take our hands off the wheel and has followed an evolutionary path that stretches back to Leonardo da Vinci and beyond.

Companies such as Ford, Mercedes and Tesla are racing to build autonomous vehicles for a radically changing consumer world. Ford, for instance, recently tripled its investment in its autonomous vehicle fleet and is testing 30 autonomous Ford Fusion hybrids in California, Michigan and Arizona. And yet, the fingerprints of tech history can be seen in almost every aspect of their exciting new capabilities.

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In this piece, we dug back into the history of autonomous technology and returned with an array of key breakthroughs—covering land, sea, and air—that built the foundation of the cars of tomorrow.

da Vinci’s Self-Propelled Cart—c. 1500  Centuries before the invention of the automobile, Leonardo da Vinci designed a cart that could move without being pushed or pulled. Springs under high tension provided the power to the cart, and steering could be set in advance so the cart could move along a predetermined path. A distant precursor to the car, the device is sometimes considered the world’s first robot.

Whitehead Torpedo—1868  While these weapons of war emerged in the mid-1700s, Robert Whitehead’s invention of a torpedo that could propel itself underwater proved to be a game-changer for naval fleets around the world. The Whitehead torpedo could travel several hundred yards underwater and maintain depth, thanks to a pressurization system dubbed “The Secret.” Torpedo guidance would evolve dramatically thereafter and led to a wide range of weaponry, aircraft, and other autonomous devices.

Poyej

Mechanical Mike aircraft autopilot—1933  Extended travel times forced the development of autopilot systems for long-range aircraft. Mechanical Mike was a prototype autopilot designed by Sperry Gyroscope Co., and used by Wiley Post during a 13,000-mile, around-the-world flight in 1933. Gyroscopes kept track of the plane’s heading and interfaced with the controls to ensure accurate direction. Gyroscopes remain an integral part of autonomous vehicle tech today.

Teetor Cruise Control—1945  An engineer became so fed up with the rocking motion he experienced while riding in a car with his attorney behind the wheel that he developed one of the first cruise control system to smooth out the ride, using a mechanical throttle that could set the vehicle’s speed. The invention was commercialized in 1958.

Stanford Cart—1961  With the space race in full swing, researchers began to ponder landing vehicles on the moon. The idea of a remote-control lunar rover was posited by James Adams, a Stanford engineering graduate student–but how would it be controlled given the 2.5-second delay between when a command was sent from earth to when it was received by a rover on the moon? The solution ultimately led to the development of the world’s first truly self-driving wheeled vehicle. The Cart, as it was called, was eventually outfitted with cameras and programmed to detect and autonomously follow a solid white line on the ground. Today, successor technologies using cameras remain a vital element of autonomous vehicles.

Stanford University

Tsukuba Mechanical Engineering—1977  As groundbreaking as the Stanford Cart was, it was still just a four-wheeled cart that looks more at home in the kitchen than on a roadway. Japan-based Tsukuba Mechanical produced an autonomous passenger vehicle that could recognize street markings while traveling at nearly 20 miles per hour, thanks to two vehicle-mounted cameras.

VaMoRs—1987  Another important step forward in autonomous tech came from German engineer Ernst Dickmanns, who equipped a sedan with a bank of cameras and 60 micro-processing modules to detect objects on the road—in front of and behind the vehicle. Dickmann’s key innovation was “dynamic vision,” allowing the imaging system to filter out extraneous “noise” and focus only on relevant objects. Today, this type of imaging is crucial in helping self-driving vehicles identify potential hazards and their locations. VaMoRs proved so successful that it was able to navigate Germany’s famous Autobahn at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour.

General Atomics MQ-1 Predator—1995  While we tend to think of autonomous vehicles as a means of converting humans from drivers to passengers, another class of autonomous devices are designed to travel completely alone. Nowhere is this more visible than in the world of drones, the most noteworthy of which has been General Atomics’ Predator, an unmanned plane that for 20 years has been piloting over global hotspots for 14 hours at a time. Drones aren’t just military vehicles, of course. The Predator is decked out with technologies being adapted for cars, including radar that can see through smoke or clouds and thermal imaging cameras that enable travel by night.

U.S. Air Force photo/Lt Col Leslie Pratt

DARPA Challenges—2004-2013  The U.S. Department of Defense’s research arm, DARPA, sponsored a series of challenges that pushed autonomous technologies forward. In 2004, a competition was held to challenge vehicles to self-navigate 150 miles of desert roadway. While no car completed the route, subsequent challenges have seen dramatic leaps in capabilities. The 2007 challenge simulated a 60-mile long urban environment, with four cars completing the route in the allotted six-hour time limit.

Tesla Autopilot—2015  The most significant aspect of Tesla’s semi-autonomous “Autopilot” feature, introduced in late 2015—which enabled hands-free control for highway and freeway driving— is that it was delivered in the form of a single software update to Model S owners overnight.

University of Michigan’s MCity—2015  The University of Michigan’s 32-acre Mobility Transformation Center, called MCity, launched in 2015 as a world-class test facility for autonomous vehicle technology. Ford became the first automaker to test autonomous vehicles there, and in the harshest environmental conditions imaginable.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the dawn of the autonomous vehicle era is the collaboration between private industry, government, and academia that has already begun to fully introduce autonomous cars into our lives. As noted artificial intelligence expert Andrew Ng said recently, making autonomous vehicles a reality “cannot be done by any single organization. It will require a public-private partnership, and a community of legislators and researchers and technology companies and automobile manufacturers.” At the same time, he adds, the pace is accelerating. These amazing new machines, Ng says, “will join human drivers on our roads sooner than most people think.”

This story was produced by the WIRED Brand Lab for Ford Motor Company.