History of the Research on Vehicle Automation in Europe

The third part of the book begins with the early experiments on automated driving in Europe: It presents the guidance-cable research of the Road Research Laboratory in England, the semi-automated test-vehicle of Continental and Siemens (1968) and the guide-wire directed trucks of MAN and Bosch (1971) in Germany. Peugeot also used guidance-cables to test vehicles. The next chapter presents the shift to vision systems in Europe at the end of the 1970s. It includes the mobile robot HILARE in France and experiments with dynamic machine vision at UniBwM in Germany. Experiments of the automotive industry in visual guidance experiments are also presented (Volkswagen Opto-Pilot). The next chapter is dedicated to the concepts, research vehicles and milestones of UniBwM in Germany, especially the test-drives with VaMoRs and the 4-D approach of Ernst Dieter Dickmanns. A chapter about the PROMETHEUS-program of the European Union, detailing the performances of the research vehicles VITA-II and VaMP, is followed by a portrait of the projects Praxitèle, Cycab and La Route Automatisée (LaRA) in France and the long-distance drives of VaMP and ARGO in 1995 and 1998. The next chapter explores the defense funded research on autonomous driving in Europe. Starting with the French military project DARDS, the experimental robotics-program PRIMUS in Germany is presented together with the AutoNav-agreement (1997-2003) and the third-generation vision system (EMS) of UniBwM.