Australia's first on-road trial of driverless cars was launched on Tuesday, accelerating the nation towards a possible future in which motor vehicles are increasingly controlled by technology and not the person behind the wheel.

The high-tech trial will take place in South Australia, on the roads but in a controlled environment that is strictly quarantined from general traffic, to ensure there can be no mishaps between motorists and the driverless vehicles being tested.

But even though motorists will not see any driverless vehicles on the roads in this trial, researchers say one of the trial's biggest goals is to make the public more aware of driverless vehicles, what they can do and how close they potentially are to becoming a presence on Australian roads.

"For a lot of the public and people in government departments as well as political leaders, it's still a little bit George Jetson, out in the future and really one of the main things the trial needs to do is get people to take notice that it's closer than you think," said Gerard Waldron, managing director of ARRB, a Melbourne-based roads research organisation.