A Decade after DARPA: Our View on the State of the Art in Self-Driving Cars

A decade ago in the California high desert, 11 finalists competed in an unprecedented 60-mile race. Robot cars needed to safely and swiftly complete the mission without any human intervention -- while also interacting with human-driven vehicles -- in under six hours. It was the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, an autonomous vehicle competition that unofficially kicked off today's self-driving technology initiatives. The vehicles were considered incredible at the time, and looking back, this marked the beginning of a long journey. DARPA ensured a certain level of success by carefully managing scope: Participants agreed to a set of rigorously defined traffic rules, and DARPA eliminated pedestrian and cyclist traffic from the challenge.