A South Korean professor built an autonomous vehicle and test-drove it across the country ¡ª only for his research to be consigned to the scrapheap.
Han Min-hong, now 79, successfully tested his self-driving car on the roads of Seoul in 1993 ¡ª a decade before Elon Musk even founded Tesla, and the race to build a self-driving car became a multi-billion-dollar contest between tech giants such as Tesla and Google.
Two years later, the electric Hyundai Santro drove 300 kilometres (185 miles) from the capital to the southern port of Busan, on the most heavily-travelled expressway in South Korea.
Footage from the period shows the car barrelling down a highway, with no one behind the wheel. A 386-chip-powered desktop computer, complete with monitor and keyboard, is placed on the passenger seat. Han is sitting in the back, waving at the camera.
¡°It felt extraordinary,¡± the affable inventor told AFP.
¡°The workload was very heavy,¡± but he and his team ¡°had an enormous passion as it was something others hadn¡¯t done yet, something that hadn¡¯t come out in the world yet¡±.
At the time, South Korea was more focused on heavy industry, such as steel and shipbuilding, with the average Korean not yet familiar with cellphones.
Now, Musk¡¯s electric car firm is a $600-billion behemoth, while Han¡¯s Chumdancha is a small company in Yongin, south of Seoul, where he and one other employee still develop specialist warning systems for autonomous vehicles.