Self-driving cars: Past, present and future

The history of self-driving cars goes back much further than most people think. As early as the mid-1900s, the first proposals for driverless transportation were developed, but given the state of technology at the time, the only realistic way to achieve it were to heavily constrain the problem. Specially built tracks, magnets installed under roads to guide vehicles, and other custom infrastructure were required, even in theory. But as time went on and technology improved, constraints could be relaxed: by the 1990s, rudimentary computer vision algorithms allowed self-driving cars to perform reasonably well on the highway. But these more modern techniques required that the automated vehicle be filled with server racks, and weren't adaptable enough for city driving.