From the Archives P OPUL AR SCIENCE / OCTOBER 2013
STOR Y BY LILLI AN S TEENBLIK HWANG
Taking the Wheel N
ot long after interstate highways began snaking across the U.S., engineers started searching for ways to ease congested commutes. In the October 1967 cover story, POPULAR SCIENCE featured a potential solution: the Urbmobile, an electric mass-transit and personal-car hybrid developed by Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory. Motorists would steer this driverless concept car into a special lane, where an automated system would take over and guide it along a track. Commuters could then relax and read the newspaper until they reached their destination. While Urbmobiles never made it onto the road, a new fleet of driverless cars has already logged more than half a million miles on American highways in beta tests. To read about how modern self-driving cars navigate the open road, turn to page 54.
TIMELINE 1939 — GM introduces its concept for a selfdriving-car network at the World’s Fair.
1960 — A lab in the U.K. debuts a modified Citroën DS, guided by magnetic sensors.
1977 — In Japan, researchers unveil the first truly autonomous car.
2007 — Driverless cars interact with manned vehicles at DARPA Urban Challenge—a first.
2013 — VisLab’s self-driving system successfully navigates its first road test in Italy.
2018 — Google projects it will release selfdriving-car technology, which uses an array of radar, sensors, laser-based range finders, and cameras to navigate.
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