In some countries, specific laws and regulations apply to road traffic motor vehicles (such as cars, bus and trucks) while other laws and regulations apply to other ground vehicles such as tram, train or automated guided vehicles making them to operate in different environments and conditions.
Road traffic vehicles An automated driving system is defined in a proposed amendment to Article 1 of the
Vienna Convention on Road Traffic: This amendment will enter into force on 14 July 2022, unless it is rejected before 13 January 2022. Ground vehicles employing automation and
teleoperation include shipyard gantries, mining trucks, bomb-disposal robots, robotic insects, and
driverless tractors. There are many autonomous and semi-autonomous ground vehicles being made for the purpose of transporting passengers. One such example is the free-ranging on grid (
FROG) technology which consists of autonomous vehicles, a magnetic track and a supervisory system. The FROG system is deployed for industrial purposes in factory sites and has been in use since 1999 on the
ParkShuttle, a
PRT-style public transport system in the city of
Capelle aan den IJssel to connect the Rivium business park with the neighboring city of
Rotterdam (where the route terminates at the
Kralingse Zoom metro station). The system experienced a crash in 2005 that proved to be caused by a human error. Applications for automation in ground vehicles include the following: •
Vehicle tracking system system ESITrack,
Lojack. • Rear-view alarm, to detect obstacles behind. •
Anti-lock braking system (ABS) (also Emergency Braking Assistance (
EBA)), often coupled with
Electronic brake force distribution (EBD), which prevents the brakes from locking and losing traction while braking. This shortens stopping distances in most cases and, more importantly, allows the driver to steer the vehicle while braking. •
Traction control system (TCS) actuates brakes or reduces throttle to restore traction if driven wheels begin to spin. •
Four wheel drive (AWD) with a centre differential. Distributing power to all four wheels lessens the chances of wheel spin. It also suffers less from
oversteer and
understeer. •
Electronic Stability Control (ESC) (also known for
Mercedes-Benz proprietary Electronic Stability Program (ESP),
Acceleration Slip Regulation (ASR) and Electronic differential lock (EDL)). Uses various sensors to intervene when the car senses a possible loss of control. The car's control unit can reduce power from the engine and even apply the brakes on individual wheels to prevent the car from
understeering or
oversteering. •
Dynamic steering response (DSR) corrects the rate of
power steering system to adapt it to vehicle's speed and road conditions. Research is ongoing and prototypes of autonomous ground vehicles exist.
Cars Extensive automation for cars focuses on either introducing
robotic cars or modifying modern car designs to be semi-autonomous. Semi-autonomous designs could be implemented sooner as they rely less on technology that is still at the forefront of research. An example is the dual mode monorail. Groups such as
RUF (Denmark) and TriTrack (USA) are working on projects consisting of specialized private cars that are driven manually on normal roads but also that dock onto a monorail/guideway along which they are driven autonomously. As a method of automating cars without extensively modifying the cars as much as a
robotic car,
Automated highway systems (AHS) aims to construct lanes on highways that would be equipped with, for example, magnets to guide the vehicles. Automation vehicles have auto-brakes named as Auto Vehicles Braking System (AVBS). Highway computers would manage the traffic and direct the cars to avoid crashes. In 2006, The
European Commission has established a smart car development program called the
Intelligent Car Flagship Initiative. The goals of that program include: •
Adaptive cruise control •
Lane departure warning system • Project AWAKE for drowsy drivers There are further uses for automation in relation to cars. These include: •
Assured Clear Distance Ahead •
Adaptive headlamps •
Advanced Automatic Collision Notification, such as
OnStar •
Intelligent Parking Assist System •
Automatic Parking •
Automotive night vision with pedestrian detection •
Blind spot monitoring •
Driver Monitoring System •
Robotic car or self-driving car which may result in less-stressed "drivers", higher efficiency (the driver can do something else), increased safety and less
pollution (e.g. via completely automated
fuel control) •
Precrash system •
Safe speed governing •
Traffic sign recognition • Following another car on a motorway – "enhanced" or "adaptive" cruise control, as used by Ford Motor Company and Vauxhall • Distance control assist – as developed by Nissan •
Dead man's switch – there is a move to introduce
deadman's braking into automotive application, primarily heavy vehicles, and there may also be a need to add
penalty switches to
cruise controls. Singapore also announced a set of provisional national standards on January 31, 2019, to guide the autonomous vehicle industry. The standards, known as Technical Reference 68 (TR68), will promote the safe deployment of fully driverless vehicles in Singapore, according to a joint press release by Enterprise Singapore (ESG), Land Transport Authority (LTA), Standards Development Organisation and Singapore Standards Council (SSC).
Shuttle Since 1999, the 12-seat/10-standing
ParkShuttle has been operating on an exclusive right of way in the city of
Capelle aan den IJssel in The Netherlands. The system uses small magnets in the road surface to allow the vehicle to determine its position. The use of shared autonomous vehicles was trialed around 2012 in a hospital car park in Portugal. From 2012 to 2016, the
European Union funded CityMobil2 project examined the use of shared autonomous vehicles and passenger experience including short term trials in seven cities. This project led to the development of the EasyMile EZ10. In the 2010s, self-driving shuttle became able to run in mixed traffic without the need for embedded guidance markers. So far the focus has been on low speed, , with short, fixed routes for the "last mile" of journeys. This means issues of collision avoidance and safety are significantly less challenging than those for automated cars, which seek to match the performance of conventional vehicles. Many trials have been undertaken, mainly on quiet roads with little traffic or on public pathways or private roadways and specialised test sites. The capacity of different models varies significantly, between 6-seats and 20-seats. (Above this size there are conventional buses that have driverless technology installed.) In December 2016, the
Jacksonville Transportation Authority has announced its intention to replace the
Jacksonville Skyway monorail with driverless vehicles that would run on the existing elevated superstructure as well as continue onto ordinary roads. The project has since been named the "Ultimate Urban Circulator" or "U2C" and testing has been carried out on shuttles from six different manufacturers. The cost of the project is estimated at $379 million. In January 2017, it was announced the
ParkShuttle system in the Netherlands will be renewed and expanded including extending the route network beyond the exclusive right of way so vehicles will run in mixed traffic on ordinary roads. The plans were delayed and the extension into mixed traffic was expected in 2021. In July 2018,
Baidu stated it had built 100 of its 8-seat
Apolong model, with plans for commercial sales. As of July 2021, they had not gone into volume production. In August 2020, it was reported there were 25 autonomous shuttle manufacturers, including the
2GetThere,
Local Motors,
Navya,
Baidu,
Easymile,
Toyota and Ohmio. In December 2020,
Toyota showcased its 20-passenger "e-Palette" vehicle, which is due to be used at the
2021 Tokyo Olympic Games. Toyota announced it intends to have the vehicle available for commercial applications before 2025. In January 2021, Navya released an investor report which predicted global autonomous shuttle sales will reach 12,600 units by 2025, with a market value of EUR 1.7 billion. In June 2021, Chinese maker
Yutong claimed to have delivered 100 models of its 10-seat Xiaoyu 2.0 autonomous bus for use in
Zhengzhou. Testing has been carried out in a number of cities since 2019 with trials open to the public planned for July 2021. Self-driving shuttles are already in use on some private roads, such as at the Yutong factory in Zhengzhou where they are used to transport workers between buildings of the world's largest bus factory. In Hong Kong, the police and other workers use driverless vehicles.
Trials A large number of trials have been conducted since 2016, with most involving only one vehicle on a short route for a short period of time and with an onboard conductor. The purpose of the trials has been to both provide technical data and to familiarize the public with the driverless technology. A 2021 survey of over 100 shuttle experiments across Europe concluded that low speed – – was the major barrier to implementation of autonomous shuttle buses. The current cost of the vehicles at €280,000 and the need for onboard attendants were also issues.
Vehicle names are in quotes Buses Autonomous buses are proposed, as well as self-driving cars and trucks. Grade 2 level automated minibusses were trialed for a few weeks in Stockholm. China has a small fleet of self-driving public buses in the tech district of Shenzhen, Guangdong. The first autonomous bus trial in the United Kingdom commenced in mid-2019, with an
Alexander Dennis Enviro200 MMC single-decker bus modified with autonomous software from
Fusion Processing able to operate in driverless mode within
Stagecoach Manchester's
Sharston bus depot, performing tasks such as driving to the washing station, refueling point and then parking at a dedicated parking space in the depot. Passenger-carrying driverless bus trials in Scotland commenced in January 2023, with a fleet of five identical vehicles to the Manchester trial used on a
Stagecoach Fife park-and-ride route across the
Forth Road Bridge, from the north bank of the Forth to
Edinburgh Park station. Another autonomous trial in
Oxfordshire, England, which uses a
battery electric Fiat Ducato minibus on a circular service to
Milton Park, operated by
FirstBus with support from Fusion Processing,
Oxfordshire County Council and the
University of the West of England, entered full passenger service also in January 2023. The trial route will be extended to
Didcot Parkway railway station after acquiring a larger single-decker by the end of 2023. In July 2020 in Japan,
AIST Human-Centered Mobility Research Center with Nippon Koei and
Isuzu started a series of demonstration tests for mid-sized buses,
Isuzu "Erga Mio" with autonomous driving systems, in five areas;
Ōtsu city in
Shiga prefecture,
Sanda city in
Hyōgo Prefecture and other three areas in sequence. In October 2023,
Imagry, an Israeli AI startup, introduced its mapless autonomous driving solution at Busworld Europe, leveraging a real-time image recognition system and a spatial deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) to mimic human driving behavior. In September 2025, trade publications described the "smartbus" concept in connection with depot-based autonomous bus operation for manoeuvres such as parking, washing, and charging, in coverage of Autonomous Systems. The concept was presented at Busworld Europe later that year. In December 2025, a smartbus pilot involving the public transport operator PKM Gliwice in Poland was reported.
Modular autonomous transit Modular autonomous transit is a research concept for public transit using self-driving vehicles with connectable units, or "pods", that can adjust capacity based on passenger demand. Studies suggest these systems could improve efficiency through dynamic routing, with simulations showing reduced travel times in urban networks, though no operational systems existed as of 2025.
Trucks The concept for autonomous vehicles has been applied for commercial uses, such as autonomous or nearly
autonomous trucks. Companies such as
Suncor Energy, a Canadian energy company, and
Rio Tinto Group were among the first to replace human-operated trucks with driverless commercial trucks run by computers. In April 2016, trucks from major manufacturers including
Volvo and the
Daimler Company completed a week of autonomous driving across Europe, organized by the Dutch, in an effort to get self-driving trucks on the road. With developments in self-driving trucks progressing, U.S. self-driving truck sales is expected to reach 60,000 by 2035 according to a report released by
IHS Incorporated in June 2016. As reported in June 1995 in
Popular Science magazine, self-driving trucks were being developed for combat convoys, whereby only the lead truck would be driven by a human and the following trucks would rely on satellite, an
inertial guidance system and ground-speed sensors.
Caterpillar Incorporated made early developments in 2013 with the
Robotics Institute at
Carnegie Mellon University to improve efficiency and reduce cost at various mining and construction sites. In Europe, the
Safe Road Trains for the Environment is such an approach. From PWC's Strategy & Report, self driving trucks will be the source of concern around how this technology will impact around 3 million truck drivers in the US, as well as 4 million employees in support of the trucking economy in gas stations, restaurants, bars and hotels. At the same time, some companies like Starsky, are aiming for Level 3 Autonomy, which would see the driver playing a control role around the truck's environment. The company's project, remote truck driving, would give truck drivers a greater work-life balance, enabling them to avoid long periods away from their home. This would however provoke a potential mismatch between the driver's skills with the technological redefinition of the job. Companies that buy driverless trucks could massively cut costs: human drivers would no longer be required, companies' liabilities due to truck accidents would diminish, and productivity would increase (as the driverless truck doesn't need to rest). The usage of self driving trucks will go hand in hand with the use of real-time data to optimize both efficiency and productivity of the service delivered, as a way to tackle traffic congestion for example. Driverless trucks could enable new business models that would see deliveries shift from day time to night time or time slots in which traffic is less heavily dense.
Suppliers Motorcycles Several self-balancing autonomous motorcycles were demonstrated in 2017 and 2018 from BMW, Honda and Yamaha.
Trains The concept for autonomous vehicles has also been applied for commercial uses, like for autonomous trains. The world's first driverless urban transit system is the
Port Island Line in
Kobe, Japan, opened in 1981. The first self-driving train in the UK was launched in London on the Thameslink route. An example of an automated train network is the
Docklands Light Railway in
London. Also see
List of automated train systems.
Trams In 2018 the first autonomous
trams in Potsdam were trialed.
Automated guided vehicle An automated guided vehicle or automatic guided vehicle (AGV) is a mobile robot that follows markers or wires in the floor, or uses vision, magnets, or lasers for navigation. They are most often used in industrial applications to move materials around a manufacturing facility or warehouse. Application of the automatic guided vehicle had broadened during the late 20th century. ==Aircraft==