The ideas and experimentations for self-driving cars has been going on since the 1920s. It took around 3 decades still to see something promising and even though slow, the work has been proceeding from there. In the 1980s, Carnegie Mellon University’s Navlab and ALV projects (1984) and Mercedes-Benz and Bundeswehr University Munich’s Eureka Prometheus Project (1987) were a significant leap forward.

With the media coverage, it may feel like autonomous vehicles are already among us, they are not quite as smart as portrayed in pop culture yet. Let’s examine the levels of autonomous vehicles.

This is your ordinary car, sometimes equipped with cruise control and that’s it. Most of the vehicles on the road still fall under this category.

This is the level in which you will find the adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist to help the driver. Adaptive cruise control will keep a safe distance between the vehicle you are in and the vehicle ahead with the help of RADARs and/or cameras. It will apply brakes when traffic slows down and resume the speed when the traffic clears. Lane keep assist will tap you back into the lane if you deviate from it. Mind you, these systems are in place to assist the driver. It still requires the driver to be in control. 2018 Toyota Corolla and 2018 Nissan Sentra are examples of Level 1 cars.

This is the level where it gets interesting. The cars in this level can assist in controlling speed as well as steering. But the driver must have hands on the wheel and be ready to take control at any given moment. It will help you keep centred on a lane. Also, it will help with stop-and-go traffic by maintaining distance between you and the vehicle in front of you. Tesla Autopilot, Volvo Pilot Assist, Audi Traffic Jam assist are some examples.

This is the level that is going to be available to the general public. Currently only Tesla and Mercedes-Benz holds the approval for the same. These vehicles are supposed to be driving themselves, but only on ideal conditions and with certain limitations, such as limited-access divided highways at certain speed. Drivers can take their hands off the wheel. Still a driver is required behind the wheel, should the prior mentioned ideal conditions are not present.

Level 4 autonomous vehicles can drive themselves without human interactions. Yes, the passenger still need to enter the destination. The level 4 will still be restricted to known use cases. We might not be too far from seeing driverless cars on the road. Waymo has developed level 4 vehicles capable of driving themselves, but are now restricted by certain regulations. They have permissions to give ride to passengers in the Silicon Valley and Arizona. They are also in the process of testing vehicles capable of driving in most environments and road conditions.

In this level, we arrive at true driverless cars. Level 5 vehicles should be able to monitor and manoeuvre through all road conditions and require no human interventions whatsoever. This will eliminate the need of a steering wheel as well as pedals. Combine it with a capable voice assistant and you will have your very own K.I.T.T from Knight Rider (1982).

Below are the status of some OEMs on the autonomous field:

Due to regulations, legal battles and the technology Level 5 vehicles are probably still many years away.

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