For a long time, self-driving cars seemed to be a dream of the future. Today that dream is becoming reality with the new release of autonomous cars on the market. These origins date back many years. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayThe search for a self-driving car began as early as 1925. Francis Houdina was the first person to create an autonomous radio-controlled car that “can start the engine, change gears, and sound the horn” (Dormehl). With the limited technology of the time, he was able to realize his vision. The car could travel "Broadway in New York City... towed by an operator in another vehicle..." (Engelking). Houdina's invention was truly impressive and scientifically advanced for its time. The next big milestone for self-driving cars would come in 1968. John McCarthy, “one of the founding fathers of artificial intelligence” (Dormehl), wrote an essay about this “for other researchers to work on” (Dormehl). His research suggested building a car with “a computer…equipped with camera input that uses the same visual input available to the human driver” (McCarthy) His essay showed that there were problems that needed to be solved for to move forward with creating the car. They needed to find the right computer fast enough to do the job and they needed the car to be safe enough. He wasn't sure if the technology used was reliable enough, it would need more research and development. The car was never built. The next big milestone came in the early 1990s with the help of Dean Pomerleau. Studying at Carnegie Mellon University, Pomerleau wrote his doctoral thesis on how “networks neural networks could allow a self-driving vehicle to acquire raw images from the road and send steering commands in real time” (Dormehl). Neural networks are systems that aim to imitate the way humans act (Dormehl). This new research was much more effective than previous ones, making it an important milestone on the path to the autonomous car. In 1995, Pomerleau and researcher Todd Jochem took their car from Pennsylvania to California in a challenge titled “No Hands Across America.” They managed to get the car to drive them to California. In doing so, “they knew the limitations of the system [and knew] that there was some risk” (Pomerleau). If they completed this journey at that time, "it would be the largest test yet of the system" (Baker). Although there had been successful trials with autonomous cars, the technology was not ready to be made commercial any time soon. Along the way, automakers have slowly added new features to everyday cars. In the 2000s, “autonomous parking systems began to emerge, demonstrating that sensors and autonomous road technologies are almost ready for real-world scenarios.” (Dormehl). In 2003, the Toyota Prius was the first car to introduce self-parking technology. This gave a first look at what the near future of automotive technology might hold. It was in 2009 that self-driving cars were finally becoming a reality, with the help of Google starting its self-driving car project, under the name Waymo. This was a very important step because "in 18 months they built a system that could handle some of the toughest roads in California" (Davies). A few years later, Elon Musk announced that Tesla will also start creating self-driving cars. Tesla has managed to.