Building a pathway for autonomous driving

Existing safety systems will be augmented by onboard and external inputs; the biggest challenges will be designing the software that makes proper decisions without error and liability concerns.

Fully autonomous driving is probably still a decade or more away, but many of the systems that will make hands-free driving possible are already in place. Input from today's safety systems that keep vehicles in lanes and slow them to avoid crashes will be augmented by additional inputs that will help centralized safety controllers make decisions now handled by human drivers.

Research programs from Google and others have sparked interest in autonomous systems, but it's a huge step to move from a pricey prototype to an affordable vehicle that can be mass produced. At the SAE 2013 World Congress in April, representatives from Nissan, Honda, Continental, and Denso predicted that the first autonomous vehicle will hit the showroom floor between 2020 and 2025.