[lemoneasy]

Yup, I have the maganize in front of me and the data from stanley is as follows:
1. GPS antenna, a rooftop GPS antenna recieves data that has actually traveled twice into space - once to receive an initial position that is accurate up to a meter, and a second to correct, which makes the position accurate up to 1 cm.

2. Lidar, scans terrain 30 meters ahead and to either side 5 times a second, and the data builds a map of the terrain. (I've seen the map it makes, it looks great and accurate)

3. Video camera, scans the road beyond lidar's range. If the lasers have identified drivable ground, the computer searches for the same characteristics in the video data, extending the vision to 80 meters with safe acceleration.

4. Odometry, which is just really encoders on the wheels so the computer knows the position if GPS is interrupted.

For the most part though, it is the GPS waypoints that are used on the car. I don't think you will have an RC car driving around at 15 mph without a Mini-ITX though, since the whole pathfinding algorithim is CPU intensive. As for sonar on a servo, something tells me that data will be inaccurate, a pencil beam sonar maybe, but a low-end sonar on a servo will not give you a map that is really useful. Using it just for larger obstacles may be better.

As for lidar, I have never heard of any suppliers of low-cost or hobby lidar, if someone has seen it for sale, I'd be interested to read about it.