The idea of a driverless car first emerged as soon as the inventors realized that radio signals could be used to control vehicles remotely. It was the early 20th century. A radio engineer Francis Houdana guided a car by ‘phantom control’ at New York’s Fifth Avenue. However, the car could be called driverless in name only, since the remote driver was never far behind.

Some inventors envisaged a highway system with electromagnetic tracks that would guide the movement of automobiles in addition to radio signal control. One such inventor was Geddes from General Motors.

Despite all this, driverless cars remained elusive. This was not because there were no efforts for the idea to become a reality. By 1960s, the zeal for automatic highways waned, but then a new dream of a computer-chip controlled car emerged.

In the 1970s, there was investment into developing a prototype of self-driving car and there was some success. Inventors imagined a car that was a computer on wheels. And yet there was little achieved to materialize the concept.

The recent efforts make use of ‘internet of things’ (IoT) to make realize this dream.

There are levels of automation introduced in vehicles, where some functions are automated and some driver-assisted. It lulls a driver into complacency. It is a half-baked approach.

Elon Musk predicted a driverless car in 2023, but the federal regulators asked him to recall the vehicles whose autopilot system was found detective. Musk will be busy fixing the problem this year.