All tiers of Australian government will have to respond to the rise of driverless cars, experts say.

Australian and international delegates are at a summit run by the Australian Driverless Vehicle Initiative in Adelaide this week to talk about the technology and the regulatory challenges facing the cutting edge sector.

South Australia has keenly welcomed the advent of robo-cars, hosting the first driverless car trial in the Southern Hemisphere last year, and becoming the first state to legalise driverless car trials on public roads this year.

While they are still in trial phases around the world, the Australian Road Research Board (ARRB) says self-driving cars will be a commercial reality in coming five years, and governments need to keep up.

“Government needs to be clever in how it positions itself to ensure that nationally, we get the benefits that are promised, but also to maintain the regime of safety and accountability,” ARRB CEO Gerard Waldron said.

“We already have cars on the road in Australia where the manufacturer can update the software on the car and greatly increase its automated driving capabilities overnight, over the internet.”

Mr Waldren says there are a lot of legal grey areas.

“Driver licensing, vehicle registration, all those things are all based on the assumption that there's an accountable human and you can easily identify him or her because they're sitting behind the wheel,” he said.

“In the longer term there won't even be a wheel.

“Another grey area in the short-term is when the vehicle has a part-time autonomous operation; is it being driven by the person who is sitting behind the wheel or by the vehicle manufacturer?”

AustRoads and the National Transport Commission (NTC) are both looking at ways to modify regulations and laws that might be impediments.

“In fact we have identified 716 potential issues with our current laws that need to be considered carefully,” NTC chief Paul Retter writes in a Fairfax article this week. 

In the UK, the Transport Research Lab’s Gateway project will see next level tests of driverless vehicles in London.

The project will see people able to jump into an autonomous-driving pod and be ferried to their destination along public roads.

SA Transport Minister Stephen Mullighan says more legislative changes to pave the way for driverless cars will be revealed soon.

“We want to change our legislation to allow these technologies to be used on our roads on an ongoing basis,” he said.

“This means we get all the road safety benefits, all of the congestion benefits, and all of the productivity benefits.

“We're consulting with road user groups and the law society to make sure we're getting those laws right and we're looking forward to tabling a bill in the coming months.”