PJ Vogt

There's a real effort at one point to build magnets under the road.

And at each stage, what a self-driving car can be is dictated by the technology that's available at the time, for the most part.

No one's thinking that much about...

a vehicle that thinks for itself.

They're just thinking about a vehicle that the person in it doesn't have to drive.

Many different attempts, many different failures.

As many wonders as we invented, we could not approach nature's most majestic creation, a horse's brain.

At least not until the turn of the millennium.

Deep within the Department of Defense, there's a little-known military agency that has created some of the most innovative technology of the 20th century.

This is the story of DARPA.

Chapter 2, DARPA's Million Dollar Prize.

DARPA's current goal is to develop autonomous military vehicles, machines that can operate on their own, without drivers.

This is from a documentary called The Million Dollar Challenge.

Honestly, less a doc, more an ad for DARPA, the Pentagon's research arm.

DARPA's mission is to try to keep American technology one generation ahead of everybody else.

It doesn't always work, but DARPA has invented or funded a lot.

GPS and the M16, thoroughly internet, and the Predator drone.

In 2002, DARPA decided to pursue the driverless car in a very unusual way.

The director of DARPA at the time, a guy named Tony Tether, who had been a door-to-door salesman in his youth, definitely has that flair and that way of thinking, says, let's have a contest.

Let's see who can put all of these ingredients that we've developed together into a proper self-driving car.