Honda's Robot Army

Robots are the future, and Honda loves robots. According to this patent application, Honda has developed a system where a task can be broadcast to a team (or army - if you will) of robots and then assigned to the robot most capable of executing the task with the lowest "cost" to efficiency. This way, a server can command this army of robots and have them efficiently execute tasks by priority. An image from the patent application is below.

Ford's Non-Hybrid Plug-in

The engineers at Ford are working on a new take on plug-in vehicles. According to this patent application, Ford is developing a plug-in type vehicle that uses battery energy to power all of the electrical systems on the vehicle, but not to supply any "motive" power to the vehicle itself. This eliminates the cost of adding an electric motor in parallel to the gas motor, yet still generates substantial fuel economy improvements. An image from the application is below.