From earth2tech:
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk thinks that autonomous vehicles that drive themselves may not be as far off in the future as the auto industry makes them out to be. The big sensor arrays that Google, Toyota and Ford are testing in their autonomous car prototypes are a long ways from becoming commercially viable or affordable, Musk said in an interview with Bloomberg. But he said a scaled down version of such sensor systems relying on camera imaging could power a form of car autopilot that automates many of the ordinary tasks of driving.From DVICE:
“I like the word autopilot more than I like the word self-driving,” Musk said in the interview. “Self-driving sounds like it’s going to do something you don’t want it to do. Autopilot is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars.”
Musk told Bloomberg that he’s discussed the autopilot concept with Google’s engineers and even mentioned the possibility of Tesla and Google jointly developing such a system. But Musk later tweeted from his Twitter account that his comments to Bloomberg were meant to be off the cuff, and that Tesla and Google weren’t announcing any big new initiative.
“Creating an autopilot for cars at Tesla is an important, but not yet top priority,” Musk tweeted. “Still a few years from production.”
Musk’s notion of an inexpensive autonomous driving system is an interesting one as it does away with the complex light detection and ranging — or Lidar — sensors that use 360-degree scanning lasers to render a 3D construct of the world around the vehicle....MUCH MORE
Terrafugia unveils self-driving, self-landing hybrid flying car
A sleek new concept has popped up on the Terrafugia website. It's an artist's rendering of what Terrafugia is dubbing "the practical realization of the dream of countless visions of the future." And we're hard-pressed not to agree. The concept is of a new flying car, dubbed the TF-X, a hybrid gas-electric flying car.Yeah but can it robotically mine asteroids for the material to autonomously build satellites using 3D printers in space?
With that said, the fact that this flying car concept is a hybrid hardly does the proposed vehicle justice. Also included in the vehicle's design is a vertical takeoff mechanism and a fully automated flight program. That's right: this car is not only the world's first flying hybrid, it's also self-driving and self-landing. While Terrafugia states that "you always have the final say if its safe to land," the TF-X is fully capable of handling the entire landing process without you....MORE
Also:
Space-miners to crush asteroids and 3D print satellites - New Scientist
