1990s autonomous cars

I was not hallucinating.

In the 1990s, while I worked for the campus police, I was once assigned to work at the Richmond Field Station. It's a large facility that Berkeley operates for its engineers who need a lot of room to conduct their experiments. Well, during that shift, I saw a bunch of Buicks drive autonomously on the tarmac, with magnets guiding them.

I've never been able to find any evidence that this program existed. Until today. It wasn't just my imagination.

This evening, I went to a focus group of BMW i3 owners run by a Berkeley transportation researcher. After the session ended, I went up to him and asked him about Buicks, magnets, and the Richmond Field Station. He knew what I was talking about. The man in charge of the project was Steven Shladover.

And here is a very comprehensive video!