The military is also interested: early this year, a fleet of “zombie” trucks trundled through Fort Hood; they were the US Army’s latest attempts to build autonomous vehicles that could sweep through conflict regions without risking the lives of personnel. And the Sartre project in Europe recently sent a convoy of autonomous lorries along the motorways of Spain. Such an approach could even help save the environment. “By keeping the space between ‘class A’ trucks constant and optimising the aerodynamics, you can save 15% of the fuel,” says Burns. “And you can keep trucks moving 24/7 and organise their traffic flow – and move more freight at night.” Such arguments have led some to conclude that we will soon see many more of these autonomous lorries on the motorway – potentially setting a precedent for personal cars of the future.

“They are important because they help us to understand what self-driving vehicles do,” says Beiker. It could also help to build communication systems so that different vehicles can talk to each other and surrounding equipment – which may be an important aspect of future driverless cars. At the very least, their progress also underlines the fact that there are many approaches to driverless technology, besides Google’s.