The source of the many groundbreaking developments in autonomous vehicles (AVs) today came in the 1990s. Inspired by the futuristic image of self-driving cars of the sci-fi genre, the 90s witnessed several developments in autonomous driving:

1995: Carnegie Mellon University completed the first US coast-to-coast autonomous driving of 4,500 km. Over 98% of the journey was driven by the computer RALPH built into a minivan.
1996: Mercedes S Class managed to drive from Munich to Copenhagen through computed vision.
1997: One of the pillars of Autopilot technology, Adaptive cruise control (ACC), debuted on the Toyota Celsior.
1998: The US Congress requested an “automated highway system” demonstration.
1999: The first driverless vehicle, ParkShuttle, produced by Connexxion, rolled onto the roads.

The final period of the 1990s saw the establishment of some critical tech companies in autonomous driving, such as Google in 1998 and Mobileye in 1999.