DARPA in the archive

The archive holds 5 reports filed under DARPA, spanning 2013–2016. The earliest is “Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy”; the most recent is “News Roundup: Autonomous Tricycle Testing Underway, Apple Reportedly Ditching Plans for Electric Self-Driving Car, and More”. Original reporting came via Jennifer van der Kleut, John Estrada, Darcy Conlin and others.

This period matters for a specific reason: it is when the industry's assumptions were set. Testing permits were first issued, the acquisitions that consolidated the perception layer closed, the regulatory frameworks still in force were drafted, and a great many confident deployment dates were published. Almost all of those dates passed without incident, which makes the contemporaneous record more useful now than it was at the time — it can be read against what actually happened.

Coverage under DARPA overlaps most often with Automated Vehicle, Autonomous, Cybersecurity and Consumer, which is a reasonable map of where the topic sat in the industry's attention.

For what the listed companies in this field did over the same period, the D20 index roster tracks the corporate side. For what has since been deployed on public roads, the deployment tracker records operators, cities and dates, and the research library holds the papers this reporting drew on.