The self-driving car was already there in 1986 – De Vlucht Strip

Experiments with autonomous cars already took place in the last century. This usually involved cars that could follow a predetermined route, for example by means of signalling or rails in the road surface. In the 1980s, scientists also developed cars that could drive without such guidance. In America, Carnegie Mellon University was working on a project called ‘Navlab’, which was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Department of Defense. In 1995, the scientists drove a converted Pontiac Trans Sport from coast to coast between Pittsburgh and San Diego, covering 4,501 kilometers autonomously.

Quite an achievement, but in Germany they went a step further in the 1980s with the ‘EUREKA Prometheus Project’, a collaboration between Mercedes-Benz and the Bundeswehr University Munich. Scientist Ernst Dickmanns was the key figure in that project. Dickmanns had studied aerospace engineering and then specialized in control engineering. He conducted research into how spaceships could best return to Earth. At the time, advanced computer systems were involved that could determine the optimal route. Dickmanns wanted to apply this technology to cars and made it his mission to teach cars to ‘see’, in other words: to let cars navigate through traffic independently.

Pioneer

Before Mercedes-Benz came into play, Dickmanns first started working independently. He bought a Mercedes van and packed it with computers, cameras and sensors. This car was called the VaMoRs, short for ‘Versuchsfahrzeug für aautonomous mobilität und Rechnerseh’. Loosely translated, this means ‘test vehicle for autonomous mobility and computer vision’. In the video below you can see how there is a whole battery of computers in the back of the bus, with an operator who can monitor the camera image and the systems. The bus steers, accelerates and brakes completely independently. In 1987 Dickmanns ran the first major test with the test vehicle. On a stretch of autobahn not yet open to all traffic, the VaMoRs covered 20 kilometers completely independently with a maximum speed of 96 kilometers per hour.

How did Dickmanns manage that at the time with the limited computing power of the computers of that time? He looked for this at the functioning of the human eye. We can only see a small spot in the center of our field of view in high resolution. In a similar way, the car had to focus only on things that matter when driving, such as road markings and other cars. As a result, the computers had to process much less input from the camera images. However, he did run into the problem that the car did not know what to do if the road markings were temporarily less visible. However, many today’s autonomous driving systems still face this problem.

The driving systems of the VaMP. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

The trial with the VaMoRs gave Daimler an interest in Dickmanns’ work. In the EUREKA Prometheus Project, he was able to work with an amount of €800 million to develop a new self-driving car: the VaMP, a Mercedes-Benz W140 500 SEL with the autonomous driving systems from the VaMoRs on board. The VaMP also had a twin brother: the VITA-2. Four cameras provided the onboard computer systems with the input they needed to respond quickly to changing situations.

An untimely end

With the VaMP and the VITA-2, Dickmanns’ team had some successes. At the international presentation of the project in Paris in 1994, eight years after Dickmanns’ first experiments, the cars covered more than 1,000 kilometers on French highways, reaching speeds of up to 130 km/h. The demonstration included changing lanes and overtaking other cars independently after permission from the driver, who was still behind the wheel for safety. The cars performed these tasks without any problems. In 1995 the cars covered 2,000 kilometers in a return journey from Munich to Copenhagen. During that ride, the speed even exceeded 175 km/h. On average, the driver had to give the car a manual correction every 9 kilometers, the longest distance the car drove completely independently was 158 kilometers.

The autonomous test cars. Photo by Roland Behringer via Politico.

An impressive achievement, certainly for the time, but Dickmanns was unable to continue with his research. Daimler wanted to make money instead of spending and sent out a message that the scientist would come up with a product that could be marketed within a few years. That did not work out and the car manufacturer therefore financially pulled the plug on Dickmanns’ research project, bringing an early end to the scientist’s work.

Compared to today’s autonomous driving systems, Dickmanns’ system was special because it relied solely on camera images. The current autonomous driving systems mainly work via GPS and data, whereby a radar observes the environment of the car. A number of manufacturers now seem to be seeking refuge in Lidar, but that technology is still in its infancy.

Dickmanns himself thinks that the car industry will once again fall back on his work in the future, especially because the current systems do not work optimally when cars end up in areas where not much is known about it yet. “People are going to realize at some point that after a storm, an earthquake, or even more so in a military context when you’re in new areas, the current approach won’t work,” the scientist said in an interview with Politician. However, he agrees that much more is possible with today’s technology than in his day. “If I could start again today with today’s available technology, this would be a completely different story,” said the now 85-year-old German.

Photos by Wikimedia Commons, Reinhold Behringer via Politico and YouTube.