A Brief History of Autonomous Vehicle Technology

The prospect of autonomous cars may still seem impossibly futuristic. Their coming debut will take our hands off the wheel and has followed an evolutionary path that stretches back to Leonardo da Vinci and beyond.

Companies such as Ford, Mercedes and Tesla are racing to build autonomous vehicles for a radically changing consumer world. Ford, for instance, recently tripled its investment in its autonomous vehicle fleet and is testing 30 autonomous Ford Fusion hybrids in California, Michigan and Arizona. And yet, the fingerprints of tech history can be seen in almost every aspect of their exciting new capabilities.

In this piece, we dug back into the history of autonomous technology and returned with an array of key breakthroughs—covering land, sea, and air—that built the foundation of the cars of tomorrow.