Still not certain if the public is ready for self-driving taxis, they are nevertheless on order for infusion into cities in 2019. So that settled, what’s next on the horizon for future-is-now transportation?
While they are not yet locked and loaded, personal flying machines and a driverless capsule that bears on teleportation are teasing their way into imminent reality. The following three disruptive transportation technologies are projected to be modes of travel by the time today’s newborns are either potty-trained or start kindergarten.
The Self-Driving Air Taxi Lifts Off
Forget the roads, Airbus and its partners are taking driverless technologies to new heights.
“At 8:52AM on January 31, 2018 in Pendleton, Oregon, our full-scale aircraft, dubbed Alpha One, reached a height of 5 meters (16 feet) before descending safely,” A3 reported on Medium earlier this month.
Project Vahana’s vehicle, standing roughly 10 feet high and spanning 20 feet in both width and length, is a single passenger electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) self-piloted, electric aircraft. Development of sense-and-avoid technology will be developed along with “transition and forward flight.”
According to CNBC, the idea began two years ago with a sketch on a napkin.
Uber and Bell Helicopter are also working on their version, an Air Taxi on a simulator display at the Consumer Electronics Show 2018 in January.
A $2M Jetpacks Prize
A demonstration of jetpack protoypes -- an idea perhaps first sketched by Leonard Da Vinci -- is scheduled for October 2019.
GoFly is a Boeing-sponsored competition that’s inviting anyone to enter a two-year contest, with $2 million total in prizes, for the creation of a personal flying device that can carry an individual 20 miles without refueling or recharging, according to Popular Science.
Teams must submit proposals and a preliminary design by April 18, 2018. Phase II requires a written report and a vertical takeoff demonstration by February 6, 2019. Finally, in October 2019, teams will fly a course in the final “flyoff.”
Available to contestants are a distinguished array of GoFly mentors from the aviation world. By November 2017, more than 1,000 had already signed up to compete.
The Race to Launch Pilotless Pods
Hyperloop is transportation by passive magnetic levitation that delivers people in a capsule car to their destination at speeds more than 700 mph, according to GearBrain.
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Inc. (HTT) said it put the first capsule into production last year, according to CNBC, and has been working on environmental studies for construction of a depressurized tube system in the Quay Valley north of Los Angeles since 2016. But construction hadn’t started. Then the Fresno Bee reported the whole idea dead in December when the developer backed out.
However the idea, once championed by if-he-only-had-the-time Elon Musk on SpaceX, is still being developed by HTT and competitor Virgin Hyperloop One. Just announced by members of Congress, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, HTT and the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency is a new regional feasibility study for a Midwest hyperloop.
If it breaks ground, in three-to-five years a Midwest hyperloop tube will go through Northeast Ohio and stop in Chicago 28 minutes after leaving the Cleveland station. From there it could be expanded to Buffalo, New York and beyond.
