Even though they’re barely on the road, self-driving cars have been talked about so much that they already seem like they’re last year’s model. Google has been working on one for years. Apple is allegedly, possibly, working on one, too. And there’s even speculation that everyone from Uber to Tesla could join the race, too. But before you give up the wheel, get familiar with the technology driving autonomous vehicles. There are three things required to turn a regular car into an automated one, according to Sridhar Lakshmanan, a self-driving auto expert and engineering professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.