Self driving cars seem like a far-out idea right now, but in the next 20 years, they will be totally common, says Dr. Henrik Christensen.

"My current prediction is that kids born today will never have to drive a car," he said in this interview with FW:Thinking. It's a reasonable conclusion — consider Google's self-driving car system, which is already street-legal in Nevada, Florida, Michigan, and California. (Texas has similar legislation already in the works.)

Dr. Christensen is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and the KUKA Chair of Robotics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He contributed to the widely read "Roadmap for US Robotics," which lays out the case for robots being invaluable in solving problems we're bound to face in the future. He knows his robotics.

Not only will robots handle our driving, he said, but they'll make us happy too. Over the next five to ten years, he says, "we won't have to do a lot of the dull things in our daily lives." This means more time to do things we really enjoy.

Here's the complete interview with Dr. Christensen: