At the moment, this is still a very "research-y" topic and a lot of this work is still done at universities and private research labs. Because of that, you'd probably have best chances with either a MSc in computer science with some related research experience (-> published papers) or a PhD in a related area. (robotics, computer vision, AI, ...). I wouldn't completely rule out, that there are places, where you can start right after a bachelor's degree but usually there is quite a lot of competition for such positions.

I suppose, most car OEMs and automotive software suppliers work at least on some aspects of self-driving cars or driver assistance (which may be interesting for you, as well, but is far more common and thus far easier to find a job). I've been working on driver assistance in my previous company and there are lots of companies who work on this, including all car manufacturers and tier1 automotive software suppliers (at least to my knowledge).

You have to keep in mind, that this course is rather simple and it won't teach you enough in order to be able to work on such project. Each of the topics (like image processing, navigation and planning, actuator control, etc.) is a huge research field and I think you have to focus on one of this areas in order to be able to really contribute (for example I focus on computer vision).

After that like Tux said, all OEMs and big parts suppliers work have such projects going on and they usually look for a lot of PhD students. Also several universities and research labs have their own projects, but again I think the best way to get there is within a PhD program.

I would like to know this as well! I'm very interested in the field. It was actually Sebastian Thrun's videos on auotonomous vehicles (the first one I saw was his TED talk) that got me excited and inspired by the prospect. So when I heard that he was putting on a class to teach the basic concepts, I was super excited!

There's actually an autonomous vehicle company in my hometown. I'd love to also learn what things might be needed/required for someone in the field.

This topic really fascinates me as well, but that was a question I had when I first saw this course offered. Why is something so very specialized being offered? Is it for our own personal enjoyment? If tens of thousands know how to build a self-driving car, what is the payoff? There certainly aren't jobs or positions for each of us. I have the feeling this course is more for people who have a little bit of free time and want to do something neat rather than to becomes experts in the field. Count me in, not complaining ...

First you need a degree, then you can go into research. I think that there will be a lot of stuff besides cars that need automation.

You can apply a lot from this course to other types of vehicles, with a better probability of landing a job, for example: Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

There are loads of companies trying to translate all this research into something viable for the market (google being one of them). Sometimes, having a CS/mech eng/elec eng background is enough to get you in through the door, however you may not be put on projects that implement the algorithms right off the bat without a formal degree. However, these projects usually require a ridiculous amount of CS/Engineering support around these 'core' algorithms.

To get into these companies becomes the old problem of finding the right companies and finding an 'in'...NETWORK!