The brief history of the self-driving car is parked in Pittsburgh. Robotic vehicles built by students and professors stand sentry on the campus green at Carnegie Mellon University.
These cars carry scars and dents-one shows rollover damage-from participation in a legendary series of competitions organised by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), a research and development wing of the US military. Many of the engineers involved in those contests went on to launch autonomous vehicle startups that are now steering the future of transportation.