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Comment by yari_ashi_zero | Hacker News Reader

I lived in Pittsburgh from 1989 to 1991, very close to Carnegie Mellon University. One of their technical departments (CMU) had a self-driving car (really a van like a UPS van) even back then ; we saw it driving around our neighborhood sometimes. I think it always had an operator standing by inside it, for override.

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That was the NavLab, an autonomous vehicle with a crew of 5. I was in it once when I visited CMU. Rack-mounted workstations in the back with up to 3 operators, a driver, and someone with a keyboard in the passenger seat. Top speed about 5 MPH. First 3D LIDAR.

Good ideas, nowhere near enough compute power or good enough sensors. Or precision GPS, which modern self-driving cars lean on too much.

> That was the NavLab, an autonomous vehicle with a crew of 5.

And a "Nobody on board" yellow diamond sign in the window. Pfui.

They had to start somewhere. But progress was too slow for years. Tony Tether at DARPA came up with the DARPA Grand Challenge because he thought the DARPA-funded automatic driving projects needed a serious kick in the ass. It worked.

(The reason it worked is not well known. Some major research universities were quietly told by DARPA that if they didn't do well in the Grand Challenge, their DARPA funding would be cut off. Suddenly entire CS departments were being devoted to automatic driving. Levels of effort went from 5 people to over 100, and not at DARPA's expense.)

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