Self-Driving Vehicles: Key Technical Challenges and Progress Off the Road

In a period of fewer than 10 years, the quest for self-driving vehicles, also referred to as autonomous vehicles (AVs) or driverless cars, has become one of the biggest technology races in the world, with tens of billions of dollars poured into companies and start-ups. The goal is an on-road, consumer-driverless car: whether owned by individuals or part of a centralized ride-sharing fleet, this is the area where the majority of investment has occurred. However, AVs have been around for much longer in other fields, such as mining, which share some but not all of the same technical challenges faced by on-road AVs. In this article, we provide an overview of the key technical challenges and solutions for both onand off-road AVs, with a focus on one of the key unsolved challenges-interaction with vulnerable road users (VRUs).