A 3D-Printed Autonomous Car With An Onboard Scout Drone

Local Motors, creator of 3D-printed cars like the Strati, teamed up with Mouser Electronics to sponsor the Essence of Autonomy Challenge. Competitors were to use the Strati as a starting point to create an autonomous vehicle, with engineer Grant Imahara as judge. The winning entry was Fly-Mode, an autonomous vehicle with a quad-rotor drone that can land on the vehicle's rear deck. But the drone doesn't merely fly around scouting the landscape--or Los Angeles traffic, which Imahara fantasizes about in the video--as you drive. Its sensors transmit the drone's position in the air to a computer on board the vehicle.