We'll start this section with a brief history of AV research (which started surprisingly long ago). We'll also try to define the different levels of AV automation according to the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE).
Introduction to AVs
Brief history of AV research
The first serious attempts to implement self-driving cars began in the 1980s in Europe and the USA. Since the mid 2000s, progress has rapidly accelerated. The first major effort in the area was the Eureka Prometheus Project (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Prometheus_Project), which lasted from 1987 to 1995. It culminated in 1995, when an autonomous Mercedes-Benz S-Class took a 1,600 km trip from Munich to Copenhagen and back using computer vision...
