A stand-alone vehicle (also known as a car without driver, car, auto-driving car, robotic car [3]) and unmanned land vehicle is a vehicle that is able to detect its surroundings and navigate without human input. Many of these systems are evolving, but as of 2017 no cars allowed on public roads were completely autonomous. They all require a human being behind the wheel who must be ready to take control at any time.
Freelancers use a variety of techniques to detect their environment, such as radar, laser light, GPS, odometry and computer vision. Advanced control systems interpret sensory information to identify appropriate navigation routes, as well as obstacles and relevant signage. Self-employed cars must have control systems that are capable of analyzing sensory data to distinguish between different cars on the road.
Demonstration systems date back to the 1920s and 1930s. The first attempts at truly autonomous cars appeared in the 1980s with the Navlab and ALV projects of Carnegie Mellon University in 1984 and Mercedes-Benz and the Eureka Prometheus Project in Munich at the University of Munich in 1987. An important milestone was achieved in 1995, when NavLab 5 of CMU completed the first autonomous long distance unit. Of the 2,849 miles between Pittsburgh, PA and San Diego, California, 2,797 miles were autonomous (98.2%), completed with an average speed of 102.8 km / h. Since then, companies and research organizations have developed prototypes.