Self-driving cars of all time

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    About vehicles moving without human hands , today does not speak only dumb. And, by the way, research in this direction has been going on for more than half a century. How did it all begin, what did it come to, and what next ? RoboHunter has a glimpse into the history of unmanned cars.

     

    General Motors Firebird II


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    In the distant 50s, the automakers developed the first prototype of a futuristic smart car. Thanks to the titanium case, stylish design and a new braking system, the car made a lot of noise in due time. But even more surprising were the magnetic sensors, which integrated with metal cables on the road and helped vehicles not get into accidents. Firebird was able to ride autonomously, and the speed and direction of movement were controlled by an intelligent system. In the future, there were still attempts to improve the car, but the experiments did not end with mass production.
     
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    Citroen DS


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    He became the first car that was released on the road and could move without a man driving (1960s). The car became “smart” due to its interaction with signals from road cables. He could also make relatively smooth movements, avoiding complex turns.
     
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    Chrysler plymouth


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    The launch of this large-scale project was carried out in the seventies on the territory of Ohio University (Columbus). Magnetic sensors were built into the bumper of a regular car.
     
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    For automatic control, a computer appeared in the cabin, which took up half of the rear seat. An electric generator, a power source for all internal equipment, was located on the roof of the car. Subsequently, the car was tested for another 10 years in parking lots, but the car never appeared on real roads.
     


     

    Mercedes VaMP and VITA-2


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    The German Ernst Dickmanns succeeded in creating a pioneer from truly “smart” cars, which had an unprecedented filling.

    In the eighties, the inventor made a Mercedes minivan self-governing, the weight of which due to the filling reached 5 tons. The project interested Daimler-Benz, which allocated a number of investments to create two more “robotic cars,” which were subsequently tested on Parisian roads.

    In the 95th, self-management functions appeared in one of the Mercedes S-class sedans. The car already had "computer eyes", a system for reading signals about the movement of other vehicles. On its own, the car could overcome about 158 ​​kilometers.
     


     

    Robot truck and self-driving car Mercedes-Benz F 015


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    At the beginning of 2014, one of the Mercedes trucks with an automatic control system drove along German roads in order to verify the effectiveness of the system. Then the control system was built into a regular truck. Later, the company introduced a new type of truck -  “Future Truck 2025” , with an updated automatic (or rather, semi-automatic) control system:





    In 2015, Mercedes introduced the  concept of self-driving cars Mercedes-Benz F 015 at CES :
     

     

    In San Francisco, a team of engineers tested this robotic car:
     

     


     

    DARPA Grand Challenge


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    Until 2004, the development of self-driving cars reached such a level that some of their representatives could participate in competitions. The winner of the DARPA Grand Challenge was to win $ 1 million if he walked 228 km between California and Nevada in less than ten hours. But the prize remained with the founders of the competition, since not one of the participants could solve the problem - he did not go further than 12 km.

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    Google Toyota Prius


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    In 2012, Google joined the industry by posting a presentation of the unmanned Toyota Prius on the Internet. In the same year, the car passed more than fifty thousand test kilometers:
     

     
    Google introduced a prototype of its creation two years later. 
     
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    Two passengers can be in the passenger compartment, and a computer is used for control, while there is no steering wheel, pedals, gas and brake. The car can move at maximum speed - 40 km per hour:
     

     


     

    Delphi automotive


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    The British-made robotic car based on the Audi Q5 was able to make a journey of 5.5 thousand kilometers from San Francisco to New York. It took him about 9 days.
     

     


     

    Volvo (2014)


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    For the first time, the automaker began talking about the release of drones on the road in 2013. And plans for the future include the launch of about 1000 prototypes.
     

     
    In the first phase of the Drive Me project, the concern presented a semi-autonomous vehicle with a route of 50 km. At this stage, the company's engineers sought to figure out how soon the car would adapt to the high-speed mode, whether it could follow the general flow, and how it would respond to sudden changes in the situation.

    It is worth noting that the complete autonomy of the machine is not yet provided for, but the company's specialists are going to get rid of human participation.
     


     

    Audi RS7


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    In the same year, the German automaker Audi Group began testing racing cars that I can ride without human intervention . The company was able to achieve the accuracy of a self-driving car at a speed exceeding 300 km / h. 
     

     
    In October of that year, the Audi RS7 drone entered the Hockenheimring race track.
     

     


     

    BMW and Baidu


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    Two years later, two more well-known companies are going to present a joint prototype smart car. The search engine is required to figure out how to solve the transport problem in the country of the Rising Sun, and BMW will introduce  branded Internet services.
     


     
    Many automobile companies, as you see, are betting on the future with independent robotic cars. I would like to quickly see on the roads something like Lexus from the Minority Report

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    or Audi RSQ from the movie "I, Robot"

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