publications on autonomous driving

This book presents the most important milestones of the research on automated and autonomous driving in the United States, Japan and Europe throughout five decades (1950-2000). Drawing on sources from the automotive industry, electrical engineering, the robotics and AI-domain and military institutions, it retraces the transition from the guidance-cable approach to vehicle-based sensor and vision systems. Giving a detailed overview of the technical concepts, artefacts, research vehicles and robots, the book presents the transnational engineering efforts that started long before Silicon Valley entered the field. In addition, the book also uniquely details the role of the military in the domain of vehicle automation. This all ensures the book is of great interest to historians of technology, practitioners in engineering disciplines, scholars working in mobility studies, journalists, and political decision makers.

Automated and autonomous vehicles (AAVs) are full of promises for a better, more efficient, safer, cleaner and fairer future. However, there are a number of challenges associated with increasing levels of automation resulting in full autonomy. The book Automated Transport: Technical and Humanitarian Aspects is the first systematic treatise in Czech language that takes seriously the interdisciplinary nature of the challenges associated with AAVs. A total of eleven chapters written by Czech and international experts guide the reader through important areas of technical and humanitarian reflection on AAV. Together, they are part of a mosaic whose individual pieces form a complex picture of automated and autonomous transport in the light of various disciplines, from cultural history, computer science, physics and sensor technology, safety theory, ethics, psychology, law and urban planning.

In this article, Fabian Kröger addresses the question if machine vision systems of autonomous cars can cast glances. Findings from cultural and media studies – in particular visual culture studies – are brought into a dialog with history of technology approaches on engineering practices. Following an introduction to the various vehicle sensors, one of these sensors – the camera – will be examined in more detail. To this end, Paul Virilio’s theses are confronted with Ernst Dieter Dickmann’s development of a seeing automobile. The outlook discusses the extent to which autonomous vision systems redistribute the balance of power between man and machine.

This special section on “Degendering the Driver” explores how gender intervenes in the potential shift from a driver-centered to a driverless car culture. It focuses on representations of imagined futures—prototypes, media images, and popular discourses of driverless cars. Following the tradition of feminist cultural studies of technoscience, we ask in our introduction how these new techno-imaginaries of autonomous driving are gendered and racialized. We aim to explore if the future user of an autonomous car is gendered or degendered in the current media discourse. The four articles explore what kinds of images are used, what promises are made, and how the discourse about autonomous driving is influenced by gendered norms. Some authors emphasize that self-driving vehicles could encourage pluralized forms of masculinity. Nonetheless, all authors conclude that driverless cars alone will not degender the driver but rather encourage a multiplication of gendered and racialized technologies of mobility.