The Eureka PROMETHEUS Project (PROgraMme for a European Traffic of Highest Efficiency and Unprecedented Safety, 1987–1995) was the largest R&D project ever in the field of driverless cars. It received in funding from the EUREKA member states,[1] and defined the state of the art of autonomous vehicles. Numerous universities and car manufacturers participated in this Pan-European project.
In formulating the project, the automotive and industrial partners recognised the need for a wide range of skills and cooperated with over forty research establishments to create a programme consisting of seven sub-projects. Under a steering committee were three projects on industrial research and four on basic research.[2]
Industrial research
Basic Research
In 1987, some UK Universities expressed concern that the industrial focus on the project neglected import traffic safety issues such as pedestrian protection. PRO-GEN project leader, the UK Government's Transport and Road Research Laboratory noted that research activities should 'in some way, further the aims of the vehicle companies.[3]
The project culminated in a 'Board Members Meeting' (BMM) on 18–20 October 1994 in Paris.[4] Projects demonstrated ('Common European Demonstrators') were:
CED 1 : Vision Enhancement
CED 2-1 : Friction Monitoring and Vehicle Dynamics
CED 2-2 : Lane Keeping Support
CED 2-3 : Visibility Range Monitoring
CED 2-4 : Driver Status Monitoring
CED 3 : Collision Avoidance
CED 4 : Cooperative Driving
CED 5 : Autonomous Intelligent Cruise Control
CED 6 : Automatic Emergency Call
CED 7 : Fleet Management
CED 9 : Dual Mode Route Guidance
CED 10: Travel and Traffic Information Systems
PROMETHEUS PRO-ART profited from the participation of Ernst Dickmanns, the 1980s pioneer of driverless cars, and his team at Bundeswehr Universität München, collaborating with Daimler-Benz.[5] A first culmination point was achieved in 1994, when their twin robot vehicles VaMP and VITA-2 drove more than on a Paris multi-lane highway in standard heavy traffic at speeds up to . They demonstrated autonomous driving in free lanes, convoy driving, automatic tracking of other vehicles, and lane changes left and right with autonomous passing of other cars.[6]
There were upwards of 600 commercial members that participated in some way in the Prometheus Project,[7] however, notable ones include
In addition to commercial participation, there were multiple countries that assisted with the project. These include