Back To the Future: Autonomous Driving In 1995

First time accepted submitter stowie writes This autonomous Pontiac Trans Sport minivan that drove 3,000 miles was built over about a four-month time frame for under $20,000. "We had one computer, the equivalent of a 486DX2 (look that one up), a 640x480 color camera, a GPS receiver, and a fiber-optic gyro. It's funny to think that we didn't use the GPS for position, but rather to determine speed. In those days, GPS Selective Availability was still on, meaning you couldn't get high-accuracy positioning cheaply. And if you could, there were no maps to use it with! But, GPS speed was better than nothing, and it meant we didn't have to wire anything to the car hardware, so we used it."

Comments

to succor a distant memory.

[nimbius]

Ah the halcyon days of autonomous vehicles in 1995; i remember them well. Myself? I owned a self-driving Chevrolet caprice that could automatically shift from park by deleting a piece of transmission. Once it performed this feat it could transport itself directly into a parking lot bollard. My friend even owned a prototype Ford Taurus that could gracefully enter reverse and slide down a hillside into the waiting embrace of a large mailbox and come to rest in a fast food parking lot. At the time you might imagine most drivers were shocked by such amazing mechanics and computing prowess and of course this meant constant explanation. Most witnesses had a tough time comprehending such wildly futuristic transportation, and honestly my biggest complaint was trying to explain such an exotic feature to police who seemed absolutely incapable of understanding.