Is this the future of technology?
- Thread starter farmkid
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Perhaps we are interpreting your phrase "that article" differently. I assumed you meant the link in my post you were quoting, but if you were referring to the link in the OP, then nevermind.
Are we judging the flying cars by their looks and dimensions now? That's discrimination!
The Terrafugia flying car is pretty much a flying car. It's very like the cars in the films, it just operates differently and has different quirks. Yeah, it has lower manoeuvrability, it can't take off on the highway, it can't go up vertically, but who cares? Those are minor inconveniences that we'd have to live with. You'd fly your car above the buildings, not between them... No big deal.
Perhaps we're going to see a hybrid of a plane, a helicopter and a car. But first those kind of things need to become affordable and popular. You'd also need some advancements in the construction, materials and power cells...
But I think that what we already have is enough to be excited about, though not much.
The Terrafugia flying car is pretty much a flying car. It's very like the cars in the films, it just operates differently and has different quirks. Yeah, it has lower manoeuvrability, it can't take off on the highway, it can't go up vertically, but who cares? Those are minor inconveniences that we'd have to live with. You'd fly your car above the buildings, not between them... No big deal.
Perhaps we're going to see a hybrid of a plane, a helicopter and a car. But first those kind of things need to become affordable and popular. You'd also need some advancements in the construction, materials and power cells...
But I think that what we already have is enough to be excited about, though not much.
Well, it can, but that would probably not be legal. I'm not 100% positive about that.
I don't think it will be safe enough. It won't fit on a two-lane highway unless the wings extend into the shoulder, wingspan is a bit over 8m, and the lanes everywhere are under 4 m. I'd assume you'd want to have more space to lift off, and even for wider highways I don't know about occupying more than two lanes even temporarily. It definitely wouldn't be a safe thing to do on a busy highway.
Oh, it certainly wouldn't be safe. I'm just not sure if there happens to be a FAR or highway law prohibiting it yet. Certainly, there's no regulation prohibiting airplanes from attempting to land on a highway in an emergency at present.
Takeoff speeds are probably similar to highway speeds, and plenty of smaller runways today are little wider than roads (25 feet or so is about as narrow as you will find), so in practical terms it's certainly doable.
Takeoff speeds are probably similar to highway speeds, and plenty of smaller runways today are little wider than roads (25 feet or so is about as narrow as you will find), so in practical terms it's certainly doable.
"Not in my house!"
I don't think it's too difficult to control.. recently i saw a video about the cockpit and the controls of the new F35 Joint Strike Fighter currently in development and part of it were about its VTOL capabilities and how that works from the cockpit.
It wasn't more complicated than a video game.. the computer does most of the fine tuning and gives a simplified output.. you basically only control the power of the descent (with a small graphic indicator how much you use) and with the stick you control the position of the plane.
Any halfway decent video game kid today could learn to land and take off that plane safely with an hour worth of training.
Your other points are correct though.. jet engines (or other types of propulsion like propellers) use much energy to keep a plane afloat in the air but then accelerating a car after a traffic light uses also more fuel which is why fuel consumption in cities is higher than on highways when you're in cruise mode for most of the time.
Talking about the flying car development in the timeline, if you read the entries which lead up to it, you read that its appearance as a successful innovation depends on two things -
1) The advancement of AI to the point where augmented human response times are reduced tremendously so we can successfully pilot such a craft, as well as building smarter autopilots into the craft,
2) The advancement of nanotechnology as a fabrication method for the vehicle itself, making antigravity possible, not turbofans, jets or chemical rockets. (The are also projected as being suborbital).
The timeline does leave out one development that I think would be crucial for making this widespread adoption to work - an ubiquitous system of skylanes which act as virtual road systems to delineate where you can and where you cannot fly (at least in cities)
1) The advancement of AI to the point where augmented human response times are reduced tremendously so we can successfully pilot such a craft, as well as building smarter autopilots into the craft,
2) The advancement of nanotechnology as a fabrication method for the vehicle itself, making antigravity possible, not turbofans, jets or chemical rockets. (The are also projected as being suborbital).
The timeline does leave out one development that I think would be crucial for making this widespread adoption to work - an ubiquitous system of skylanes which act as virtual road systems to delineate where you can and where you cannot fly (at least in cities)
Response times aren't really a problem. Anyone can fly a plane straight and level with very little training. The problem is reliability. If you're counting on the computer to do most of the work for you, what happens when the computer fails?
The ultimate responsibility for the safe completion of any flight lies with the pilot in command, no matter what technology is backing him up.
Autopilots can follow a GPS track, can maintain your altitude, and can even automatically respond to terrain and traffic advisories. They're pretty good already.
I don't see why nanotechnology would imply antigravity.
Not that hard, just add those routes to GPS databases. But the whole concept of thousands of "cars" flying around in a city is still problematic. You don't need to fly within a city, generally; flying is more useful for long point-to-point trips away from cities.
And what happens when your meat pilot fails? How is he any better than a backup autopilot?
Isn't the real issue that an autopilot isn't trained to handle unusual and unexpected situation, or can't handle certain kinds of instrumentation failure, or simply put isn't advanced enough?
I imagine in the not so distant feature planes will be flying unattended (except for the flight attendants) and cars will be driving unattended. There would be no pilot.
Isn't the real issue that an autopilot isn't trained to handle unusual and unexpected situation, or can't handle certain kinds of instrumentation failure, or simply put isn't advanced enough?
I imagine in the not so distant feature planes will be flying unattended (except for the flight attendants) and cars will be driving unattended. There would be no pilot.
I don't think people are anywhere near being comfortable with the idea of riding in a contraption that is 100% automated without even a thought to accommodating a human at the controls. That's not even a technological issue, it's a psychological one. By and large, humans are quite wary of technology that has no element of human control.
In any case, I don't think we're that far off from cars that can drive themselves completely unassisted. We already have the technology for cars to avoid accidents without human intervention, though it hasn't gone completely commercial yet. One thing I'd love to see is a car armed with an array of cameras and sensors that can detect an imminent accident situation and automatically respond to avoid it--swerving, slowing down, etc. If it determines that the accident is unavoidable (which is the case sometimes), it can at least attempt to position the vehicle to provide maximum safety to the occupants.
Computers are a lot better at making split-second decisions about these sorts of things than humans are--we just have to go on reflexes and gut instincts, and those can easily be wrong. A car's onboard computer deals only in cold statistics--where are other vehicles, how fast are they going, how fast are you going, in what condition are your tires and brakes, does the vehicle have good traction, etc. I think all of this is a great step toward fully-automated cars. I'm of the mind that auto accident injuries and fatalities will plummet once we've got a vehicle market full of partially- or fully-automated cars.
Autopilots are actually better at handling most types of outright instrumentation failure than humans. There's a great deal of redundancy in the instruments, and computers don't really need that. Erroneous readings are a much bigger problem from an autopilot's perspective, because they can be tricky to identify.
But yes, it's an issue of adaptability. There are simply too many potential factors that computers are simply not good at responding to appropriately. Do you attempt to find a way around that squall line, or just land and wait for it to pass over? The engine is on fire. Which way should you slip to keep the flames away from the fuel tanks? That severe turbulence may have caused some buckling in one wing. Can the autopilot figure out how to baby it down to to the nearest landing site? The engine just failed and you're 20 miles from the nearest runway. Can the autopilot look out the window and select a nice, open field to glide down to?
Technologically this may be possible at some point. Good luck getting it approved legally though. Whom do you hold responsible when something goes wrong?
I could see replacing the current auto insurance system with a compensation fund, where those driving automated cars agree to indemnify the manufacturers except in cases of gross negligence (and presumably a legal review board would have to determine whether a gross negligence claim has merit before allowing it to proceed.) If the car malfunctions and it's not the result of the manufacturer's negligence (say it was instead something like poor maintenance or a situation where an accident was unavoidable) then people get paid from the compensation fund. States could set amounts for this the way they set limits for auto insurance. Everyone with one of these cars pays into the compensation fund commensurate with the level of coverage they want.
Hopefully, due to the increased safety of automated vehicles, accidents would be less frequent and less severe, and therefore the premiums for this different type of insurance would be lower, making them an attractive option. I guess at the end of the day, that's really all it is: another type of insurance plan.
If the price of an automated car ends up being reasonable compared to a non-automated car (like being only 10% more or so), then the insurance and gas savings could go a long way toward offsetting the higher price.
And who do you hold responsible for a fatal accident in which the pilot/driver didn't make a mistake? This question isn't that much different.
Companies have insurance plans for that sort of thing, and lawyers to settle lawsuits.
Also, many states are no-fault when it comes to car accidents, which means you either have insurance coverage for yourself, or for the other party (depending on the state.) It's entirely possible to have an accident that isn't anyone's fault, but that's what you carry insurance for. Automated cars would just need a slightly different kind of insurance so that the manufacturer isn't subjected to claims for every single accident involving one of their cars.
For pilots at least, the question is a bit more complicated than it seems. If something goes wrong mechanically or the plane runs out of fuel, has the pilot made a mistake? Maybe.
It's certainly possible for things to just spontaneously go wrong. However, the question is: Should the pilot have been able to know about that particular issue before takeoff? If so, it comes back to the regulation I cited earlier: The pilot in command is responsible for determining the airworthiness of a plane before every flight.
Airlines have special crews for preflight inspections, of course, but it's still the pilot who's going to be up there. They are responsible.
A random dude who thinks the computer is going to do everything for him won't be nearly so vigilant.
On the contrary, I think flying makes a lot of sense in cities. What is the primary problem with driving in a city? It's traffic. The problem is that everyone going every direction shares the same plane and their routes intersect everywhere. Because of this, we have stop signs, stop lights, traffic circles, and so forth to decide who gets to use those places of intersection and when. That creates huge inefficiencies in travel because you are constantly stopping to give others a turn with that shared space, or taking your turn while others stop and wait for you. With more planes on which drivers could travel available, those going in each direction could be separated and would no longer have their routes intersect with that of others going in other directions. You would never have to stop except at your destination. All the roads would basically become freeways and every intersection would become a freeway interchange with ramps rather than stop signs, stop lights, or traffic circles.
Outside of cities, flying would probably increase your speed somewhat, shortening the travel time, but it's in cities where flying cars would really increase the efficiency of travel.
So long as you're trying to get from A to B, the addition of a third dimension would reduce congestion considerably. It also greatly reduces the need for "lanes", since you just put people going in different directions at different altitudes. The problem is, sooner or later everyone wants to get back on the ground, and there is very limited space to do so inside urban canyons.
If you had true antigrav or helicopter-like dynamics, it might be workable. Anything that isn't capable of VTOL is going to cause trouble even without traffic control issues.
If you had true antigrav or helicopter-like dynamics, it might be workable. Anything that isn't capable of VTOL is going to cause trouble even without traffic control issues.
This would only work in large cities if you had 100% reliable computer controlled systems. Otherwise, imagine the nightmare of the typical city congestion in a 3-d environment from the viewpoint of the driver. Now add in the typical bad driving habits you see on the roads today. Driving slow in fast lanes, no use of turn signals, abrupt lane changes, crossing multiple lanes of traffic, etc.
I want no part of that.
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