It's probably not the only place but they may be way ahead of the others. I recollect attend a robotics workshop in 1998 where Dr. Takeo Kanade (http://www.ri.cmu.edu/person.html?person_id=136) from CMU gave a presentation of their work on self driving cars and recollect being amazed by their work and their demo video of US coast to coast driving. They have definitely been working on this for a long time and hence may be way ahead of the others.