American defense officials have completed testing for a driverless vehicle program that demonstrated autonomous convoys.
The Autonomous Mobility Appliqué System program for the United States Army and Marine Corps tested driverless convoys "in urban environments and with a mixture of vehicle types," CNET reported.
The autonomous vehicles were tested in many situations, including oncoming traffic, passing pedestrians and cars driving through intersections. Specially fitted with gear, the convoys were standard-issue vehicles enhanced with "high-performance LIDAR sensor and a second GPS receiver, locked and loaded with a range of algorithms," according to CNET.
"The AMAS CAD [Capabilities Advancement Demonstration] hardware and software performed exactly as designed, and dealt successfully with all of the real-world obstacles that a real-world convoy would encounter," David Simon, AMAS program manager for Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, said in a statement, as quoted by CNET.
Vehicles equipped with AMAS can still be taken over by human drivers if needed.
The autonomous convoy program was funded by an $11 million contract that the Defense Department made with defense industry giant Lockheed Martin in October 2012, according to CNET.
The Army seems to be on top of the autonomous car movement, which is gaining momentum.
Around 54 million self-driving cars will be on roads worldwide by 2035, according to a recent study from IHS Automotive.
The study projects that global sales of self-driving vehicles will rise from around 230,000 in 2025 to 11.8 million in 2035.
Experts can't seem to agree on exactly when self-driving cars will be mass-produced, but major carmakers are hard at work along with tech companies like Google, which recently began testing its famous car in Michigan.
Industry watchdogs have already grown concerned that more connectivity and "smart" vehicles will be dangerous. "Car hacking," when a hacker takes control of a vehicle from a laptop, could be the next cybercrime.
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