National Automated Highway System
Consortium
Reports Posted Online to Commemorate
Tenth Anniversary of Demo '97
The National Automated Highway System Consortium (NAHSC) presented a large-scale
demonstration of automated vehicle technologies and concepts in San Diego from August 7-10,
1997, known as Demo '97. That demonstration generated extensive media coverage and public
excitement at the time, but the work of the NAHSC was not continued beyond the demonstration
because of the loss of funding support from the U.S. Department of Transportation. In the ten years
since Demo '97, memories have faded about what was shown and accomplished, and the technical
work of the NAHSC has not been widely understood because most of its reports were not published.
In commemoration of the tenth anniversary of Demo '97, the University of California PATH
Program, one of the Core Members of the NAHSC, has scanned the NAHSC reports and the
brochures and publicity materials for Demo '97 and posted them on its web site so that they can be
available to all who are interested:
http://www.path.berkeley.edu/nahsc
The NAHSC technical reports provide visibility into the majority of the research that the Consortium
performed from late 1994 to the spring of 1998, when its work ended. These included detailed
analyses of a wide range of automated highway concepts and evaluations of alternative concepts
and technologies, as well as cross-cutting issues such as institutional and societal concerns. Taken
together, the reports represent several thousand pages of technical information that should be
interesting to transportation researchers, who have not previously had access to this information.
The brochures and publicity materials for Demo '97 that are now available online give an indication
of the scope and contents of this ambitious demonstration and the range of supporting information
that was provided to the participants who came from around the world to experience automated
driving in person. Videos that were produced for Demo '97 can also be seen on the web site,
including historical footage of earlier automated highway system concepts, tests and demonstrations
dating back as far as the 1939 New York Worlds Fair.
Contact for technical questions: Dr. Steven Shladover, steve@path.berkeley.edu
