Will The COOL FLYING CARS Ever Make It To The Airspace?

edje (69)in #technology • 8 years ago (edited)

For as long as the time of Leonardo Da Vinci, we are dreaming of moving through the air going places we want to go. Having around aircrafts and helicopters for more than a century, in recent decades quite a bit effort is put into creating flying vehicles going beyond the capabilities of a traditional airplane or helicopter; Whether it are so called vertical take of and landing vehicles (similar to helicopters but with a higher flexibility and lower noise levels eg large drones with electrical engines), or hybrid vehicles such as a car with an helicopter/airplane mode. Movies like The Fifth Element (and numerous other forward looking movies) paint a picture of enormous amount of flying vehicles; Sometimes even a world with only flying vehicles, ie no driving ones anymore.

Image Source: PAL-V

Surely, technology will not prevent us from being able to create vertical take of and landing vehicles or hybrid vehicles with no or low environment pollution (such as operating noise, CO2 etc). The race is on!

Quite a few companies are working on prototypes and some even a couple of steps further than that and spending there time on the first production vehicles to be used for testing with the authorities to get a type license.

Nearly a dozen companies around the globe, including some with deep pockets such as European aircraft maker Airbus, are competing to be the first to develop a new kind of aircraft that will enable commuters to glide above crowded roadways. A few of the aircraft under development are cars with wings that unfold for flight, but most aren't cars at all. Typically they take off and land vertically like helicopters. Rather than a single, large main rotor, they have multiple small rotors. Each rotor is operated by a battery-powered electric motor instead of a conventional aircraft piston engine.

John Hansman (Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who chairs the FAA’s research and engineering advisory committee) says:

“There’s no question we can build the vehicle. The big challenge is whether we can build a vehicle that would be allowed to operate in the places where people want to use it.

Hansman makes the point what is the most challenging to achieve when these modern flying vehicles will be on the market. Airspace may seem to be free and available to anyone who wants to use it. Reality is that airspace is the most tightly controlled area in the world. Airspace, commercial planes are using, is super tight controlled by the FAA (in the USA), Eurocontrol (North West Europe) and the likes in all countries in the world. In such space, flying vehicles are for instance not allowed to fly closer than 3 miles from each other. Extensive procedures, large and expensive systems on ground and in the aircrafts are making sure every day 10s of thousands of aircraft are safely flying from A to B around the world without collisions. Even in the so called uncontrolled airspace, strict regulations applies, although not covered by air traffic control, yet. To allow for 10s of thousands of flying vehicles in eg the space of New York City, LA, London, or even Amsterdam, not only regulations and procedures need adaptation, it also requires a complete new air traffic control solution and appropriate systems.

Airborne navigation allows for more degrees of freedom, but it leaves no room for error. A car can endure a fender-bender on the road and still get you to work, while a mid-air collision inevitably leads to a very bad day. There are external considerations as well: A vehicle that falls out of the urban sky will almost certainly land on something expensive.

The places where flying cars are most desirable just happen to be the places where they’ll be the most dangerous. That was also true of the first terrestrial cars. In the late 19th century, cities had narrow roads and no lane markings, so early automobiles crashed into children, pedestrians, storefronts and each other. Motor vehicles terrified horses and frequently caused them to bolt with their carriages.

After many decades of gruesome accidents, cities are somewhat better equipped to support the coexistence of cars and pedestrians. The bigger effect of car ownership was that people gained the ability to spread out from cities. Roads were built to serve motor vehicles, and new commercial and industrial centers sprang up along the way. Most of the last century has been spent in an auto-fueled suburban sprawl.

John Hansman says:

“It’s pretty clear that the existing air traffic control system won’t scale to the kind of density at low altitudes that people are talking about.”

NASA is developing an air traffic control system for small drones that perhaps could be expanded to include flying cars.

The question is: Will flying cars or vertical take of and landing vehicles be the solution to our transportation problems, or will it stay a novelty, a gadget for the rich?

Entrepreneur Elon Musk:

As far as the future of our roadways is concerned, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO isn’t placing his bets on flying cars. For someone who’s into bold and disruptive technology, Elon Musk’s stance on flying cars appears to be a contradiction — more so since his proposed solution to congested traffic seems crazier. “Obviously, I like flying things,” Musk told Bloomberg’s Max Chafkin. “But it’s difficult to imagine the flying car becoming a scalable solution.”

he thinks flying cars are a dumb idea for city travel. He said even though his plan to build an underground network of tunnels might seem crazy, it's actually less crazy than flying cars.

Whether or not new style flying vehicles will ever make it into the air in large numbers, it is great to see some of the models in creation. Below I list most of the companies having some vehicle in development with links to their websites under the companies name (companies are listed in no particular order).

Let me know what you think of all these super nice developments.

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Sources:

#science #transportation #future

8 years ago in #technology by edje (69)

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awgbibb (70) 8 years ago

Problem is most people can't drive properly, can you imagine some idiot ,talking on his cellphone , knocking you out of the air? Mind you, it would end world hunger!

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edje (69) 8 years ago (edited)

Hahahaha; I personally do not think flying vehicles as such will become big :) For all sort of reasons. One of the most important things to arrange for a larger adoption of these type of flying vehicles is 100% autonomous flying. Autonomous flying is already enabled in commercial airplanes for decades, but still it is not allowed to remove the pilot from the cockpit; Because of Safety reasons. Safety reasons are the most important blocker for mass adoption in my view. So yes, great developments technically, but super difficult to implement :)

Then again; most aircraft accidents are caused by pilots overriding the electronic systems, making autonomous flying maybe even more safe than manual flying :)

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