The road to driverless vehicles is a patchwork of highways and byways leading in many directions. It promises everything from cars that allow people to enjoy a living-room experience as they travel around town to a road train where motorists traveling long distances can turn over the driving to someone else by latching onto a bus or truck heading the same way.

Here's a peek at some of the most recent work now being done in autonomous driving:

Google it

The biggest attention getter is the Google Self-Driving Car. Researchers have outfitted more than a dozen cars with a Google system that uses artificial-intelligence software to collect data from video cameras inside the car, radar sensors on the front of the vehicle, and a light detection and ranging, or Lidar, remote sensor. The Lidar measures distance to obstacles with a pulse of light from a laser. One design drawback is the need for the placement of the Lidar sensor atop the car. Last month, Google said its modified autonomous Toyota Prius had completed more than 300,000 miles accident-free. The company has no immediate plans to develop self-driving cars commercially, but it could sell the software and systems to companies eager to take on such a project. Earlier this year, Nevada gave Google the first U.S. license for a driverless vehicle, allowing the company to test-drive its cars on the state's roadways.