Author: Al Williams / Source: Hackaday
The news is full of self-driving cars and while there is some bad news, most of it is pretty positive. It seems a foregone conclusion that it is just a matter of time before calling for an Uber doesn’t involve another person. But according to a recent article, [Ernst Dickmanns] — a German aerospace engineer — built three autonomous vehicles starting in 1986 and culminating with on-the-road demonstrations in 1994 for Daimler.
It is hard to imagine what had to take place to get a self-driving car in 1986. The article asserts that you need computer analysis of video at 10 frames a second minimum. In the 1980s doing a single frame in 10 minutes was considered an accomplishment. [Dickmanns’] vehicles borrowed tricks from how humans drive. They focused on a small area at any one moment and tried to ignore things that were not relevant.
Not that there were not problems. The software had some sort of learning algorithm, but it had trouble dealing with things like washed out road markings. However, he would go on to work with the United States’ Army Research Lab and that work would go on to inspire…
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