Eureka Prometheus Project. 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, 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.

Industrial research
 PRO-CAR : Driver assistance by computer systems
 PRO-NET : Vehicle-to-vehicle communication
 PRO-ROAD : Vehicle-to-environment communication

Basic Research
 PRO-ART : Methods and systems of artificial intelligence
 PRO-CHIP: Custom hardware for intelligent processing in vehicles
 PRO-COM : Methods and standards for communication
 PRO-GEN : Traffic scenario for new assessment and introduction of new systems

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.

Results 
The project culminated in a 'Board Members Meeting' (BMM) on 18–20 October 1994 in Paris.  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.  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.

Participants 
There were upwards of 600 commercial members that participated in some way in the Prometheus Project, however, notable ones include
 Aeritalia
 Aerospatiale
 ASEA-Brown-Bovei
 BASF
BMW
 Bosch
 British Aerospace
 Bull
 CASA
 CGE
 Fiat
 GEC
 Imperial Chemicals, Inc.
 ICL
 Italtel
 Matra
 MBB
 Mercedes
 Montedison
 Nokia
 Olivetti
 Peugeot
 Philips
 Plessey
 Renault
 Saab
 SGS-Thompson
 Siemens
 Thomson
 Volkswagen
 Volvo
In addition to commercial participation, there were multiple countries that assisted with the project. These include

 France
 Germany
 Italy
 Spain
 The UK
 The Netherlands
 Sweden
 Austria
 Belgium
 Denmark
 Norway
 Switzerland
 Finland
 Portugal
 Greece
 Ireland
 Luxembourg
 Turkey
 Yugoslavia
 Iceland
 Canada
 The United States
 Hungary

See also 

 Driverless car
 DARPA Grand Challenge
 ARGO Project on autonomous cars
 ELROB trials
 Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge 2011, International Competition

Notes 

Self-driving cars
Eureka (organisation)
Robotics competitions