Japanese Researchers Test Flying Trains

An anonymous reader writes "As an alternative to maglev trains, Japanese researchers are working on ground-effect vehicles. A ground-effect vehicle takes advantage of fast-moving air and uses some stubby little wings to fly just above the ground, like a maglev without the mag. This is a tricky thing to do, since you have to control the vehicle more like an airplane than a train: you have to deal with pitch, roll, and yaw and not just the throttle. A Japanese research group has built a robotic prototype of a free flying ground-effect vehicle that they're using to test an autonomous three axis stabilization system."

Comments

Solution:

[Garble Snarky]

No tracks.

Tracks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where we're going, we don't need tracks.

seems to occupy a lot more space

[parallel_prankster]

This one needs a wing span space, not as thin as current trains. But if this design saves a lot of energy, why the heck not. This is really like a low flying airplane which sounds like a cool idea.

Re:seems to occupy a lot more space

[AmiMoJo]

They will run into problems with noise. In Japan noise concerns have limited train speeds since the first days of high speed rail in the early 60s, particularly around tunnels where there is a boom every time a train exits. One advantage of maglev is that due to there being no contact with the ground noise is reduced significantly, but adding prop or jet engines would seem to make this train louder than a normal electric one.

France runs 500kph trains and the only reason Japan doesn't is noise. The latest generation bullet trains that do 300kph have a very unusual shaped nose designed to reduce noise.

Re:seems to occupy a lot more space

[Mattsson]

Yes, a ground-effect train would require more energy to propel at a certain speed than a mag-lev train of similar mass and size, but there are other areas where both energy and cost savings are made.
It would require a lot of energy and cost a lot both to produce the materials needed and during the construction of a mag-lev rail network. A ground-effect "rail" is basically a concrete culvert. Takes much less energy, resources and money to build and maintain.
Then we have the energy needed to, as you mentioned, cool the electromagnets and the energy needed to lift the train, since without power to the magnets, it will sit on the track, unless the lift is created by using permanent magnets...

The biggest problems that I can see with ground-effect trains is that they'll have to bring the energy needed, just like a air plane.. A mag-lev train can be powered by the track itself.
Also, a ground-effect train can not run slow, for instance while going through urban areas or for other reasons. Well, it can, but then it's running on wheels and will probably use more energy than a regular train. A mag-lev is still energy-efficient at 30 km/h.
There is also the issues with how well it handles snowstorms, or even regular storms.

Re:seems to occupy a lot more space

[mrchaotica]

...particularly around tunnels where there is a boom every time a train exits.

I wonder if you could solve that by changing the shape of the tunnel exits, like maybe with a gradual funnel shape instead of a hard cut-off?

Ok

[ShooterNeo]

So if you look at the article, doing it this way does NOT eliminate the track. There's still a complex track that the train runs in - that U shaped concrete trough that you can look at in TFA. The walls of the trough prevent gusts of wind from shoving the train around. The control system would have to be extremely precise, and able to react very quickly to events like a big gust of wind. I would guess the 'train' car has wheels.

Advantages - the track doesn't have coils or magnets in it. But one glance reveals that it's still an extremely expensive, complex effort to build the track - probably millions of dollars per mile.

Disadvantages : in every respect, it's still a high speed train. The ground effect trick is to achieve faster speeds without magnets, that's all. If you board one of these, you have to be going to a specific destination all the other riders are going to. Every stop slows it all down. Most of the time you save on one of these you lose due to waiting to board the train, walking to the train, etc. And you're crowded in with the public.

And while you eliminate the need for coils in the track, you have to use even MORE concrete and steel to make the cage visible in TFA, and you now need an extremely high performance control system in the train that needs to work for the train to not crash.

In short, it's a terrible idea. What we need are cheap robotically controlled cars that run on a switching network that go from starting point directly to individual destination. These cars don't even need to be all that fast, and could use conventional technology (except perhaps using capacitor banks and frequent charging points or something...but conventional tires, road, etc...we'd use the road network we already have and install fencing and barricades and bridges so no pedestrians can ever enter the streets)

Re:Ok

[PIC16F628]

Conventional (wheel on rail) Trains have far more advantages than a individual car for most journeys:

1. Very low energy consumption because of metal to metal rolling friction. Car tyres bend to become a plane of rubber in contact with sticky tar causing very high friction. Yes, the packet switching analogy is nice and best for computers but not for people. Because people will use the car more and more. See the bad points below.

2. A thousand cars driven by thousand individuals has a far bigger probability of accident simply because 1000 minds are involved without any central oversight. Who knows what these minds are doing on the road. A train is centrally controlled with professional crew.

3. When you have a car and the road is free and there is parking space, you will use it to go the next street to buy milk. In effect we will use a hammer all the time for all the jobs because the hammer is easy to hold and use. The moment public transport has to be used, you will make a trade-off analysis and use it only when required. Saves the planet, saves your limbs from degeneration.

4. Trains uses far lesser space. Compare a 8 lane highway with a two-lane railway track. Not only do cars need lot of space while moving, they lot of space at both origin and destination. Since destination can be anywhere, you need lot of space everywhere. What a sheer waste of resources.

5. You can be a zombie in a car or enjoy relaxing and eating and sleeping and reading and listening in a train.

Re:Ok

[ShooterNeo]

But that's just it. You can't go down the street to Walmart for some groceries without a car. Even if there were buses, they are full of just anyone - including scary people that the American public has been conditioned to fear. (yes, I know rationally that that scraggy guy who smells funny is probably not an axe murderer or rapist...but does a woman bringing her 2 kids know that? This is why no one rides the buses unless they can't afford anything else)

And we've spent uncountable amounts of money creating a whole country based on cars. Sure, if most people lived in multi-story apartment dwellings, you could drastically reduce the residential land areas of a city and the number of starting points and destinations for a bus or train network. The suburb didn't exist before the car. All that sunk money - all those streets and all those houses - represent a cost that cannot be thrown away. America is a rich country, but even America couldn't afford to demolish all it's existing infrastructure in favor of public transit using conventional technology.

Hence my robot taxi idea. Robot cars cannot function with known software methods if other human drivers and pedestrians are allowed onto the roadways. But if we surrounded every roadway used by the robot taxi network with fences (including a barrier on top), with automatic sliding doors at boarding/disembarking points, we could use robotic cars with conventional software driving them. The roads would all be explicitly marked with RFID tags in the pavement, a special material would mark the lanes that would be easily to detect by the car's sensors, and every vehicle on the road would have several markings on the front, back, and sides to make them easy to detect. So each vehicle would know exactly where it was, the distance to the nearest car, and so forth. A single chip solution would run all of the software (with a redundant system on a chip or two checking for errors).

So if you lived on a little used side street, the nearest stop might be down the street a bit. If you wanted to go shopping, you'd request the car that picks you up to have room for a shopping cart. (you'd either bring your cart from home or rent one from the store). If you didn't feel like walking, you could ride a motorized wheelchair right to the pickup point and summon a taxi that was designed for it. Multiple private firms would be in charge of the interior fixtures and cleaning of the robot taxis, so there would be differing grades of service - from a leather lined 'executive class' robo taxi that the supplier has cleaned between each passenger to a vinyl lined 'economy class' taxi that is cheap.

You'd specify your destination ahead of time, and the transit routing computer would make sure there was space for your entire trip on each segment of road at that future moment in time. (for example, if a 1 mile segment of road had the capacity to hold 500 vehicles between 5:05 and 5:07 it would increment the number of vehicles allocated to that segment by 1). If there was no possible route that you could take that would not delay other riders, you would be offered a car pool option or charged a higher rate. If you had a medical emergency you could get priority routing straight to a hospital.

Re:Ok

[ryanov]

First of all, no one should shop at Walmart period. It is a soulless evil company at all respects that hurts all of us on a daily basis. Second of all, thanks to their tax cheating ways, no one lives down the street from a Walmart anyway. There are plenty of grocery stores in reasonably built areas that are walking distance. Many of them even deliver.

Second of all, you absolutely can buy groceries on foot -- ever heard of a cart?

Third, sunk money? All of the road maintenance and fuel and costs to the environment are on-going. Slowly moving to a model that makes economic and efficient use of space will save money in the long run.

Really, all of your problems have been solved already: people not living in places that are less dense than streetcar suburbs. Raise the price of gas over time, people will move, and we don't have to deal with all off this robot cockery.

Re:Ok

[RobbieCrash]

You are aware that Japan has a very large network of transportation trains, many of them high speed, as does much of the rest of the world outside of Texas, right?

You driving your car, along with 1,000 other people driving their cars from Austin to Houston uses orders of magnitude more energy than 15 busses and 2 trains to transport the same 1,000 people the same trip.

Additionally, a commute from the outskirts of Toronto, where I live, to downtown central takes ~2 hours during rush hour, that same trip takes 40 minutes on the subway, so even shorter distances can be more efficient.

Re:Ok

[ryanov]

You're missing piece is the price of gas. Gas is artificially low now, which changes the price and which, since it's not taxed to the degree that it should be, stunts growth in mass transit partially because that money could fund transit and partially because no one has to use the train and so there is not enough demand for more service.

In your scenario, in a better case, your high-speed line would be augmented by low speed (but still fast) trains and light rail, all of which shorten the distance and the amount of time required to travel. Also, even in your current case, if you can avoid the bus, you can travel during trafficked periods because you are unaffected. And, in your current case, if that's a trip you make often, you probably live more proximate to the train.

Additionally, I have carried a lot of stuff on trains before.

Re:Ok

[nhtshot]

I live in a place that HAS high speed trains (south China). I also drive. The train is great for a trip to Guangzhuo (80km) or Shenzhen (72km). Driving to either of those places is a pain in the butt and the train is pretty cheap (about $8).

There are places that they work. I've also spent a fair amount of time in Japan. The high speed trains there also work great.

All of the previous posts about suburbia are correct, but you have to look at the big picture. Not everyone lives in suburbia. I'm not an advocate of forcing people to abandon the suburban life, but there is a third option. South China has huge sprawling megalopolis type cities with a smattering of high speed rail connecting them. Overall, it's pretty efficient. Most people, when looking for a residence here, specifically ask how close it is to the train station.

With all of that being said, it will probably NEVER work in the US.

Re:Ok

[WegianWarrior]

So basically what you are saying that since it's a bad idea for the US to implement this, it's a bad idea for everyone? You know, different countries and cultures have different needs and priorities :)

Maybe it really is a bad and impractical idea for the US to implement a system like this, even if the US as a society really should look into ways to reduce their dependency on conventional cars - if nothing else than for the fact that the rising gas prices means the average american uses more and more of his disposable income on fuel. Perhaps your idea for a automated taxi cab system is just the right thing to do that, I don't know.

But perhaps flying trains is a great idea for Japan, since people there already uses public transport to a large degree for their every day travel? If they can shift more people faster using less energy and with a lower investment in infrastructure, more power to them. From their point of view, it's probably a much more sensible idea than a huge fleet of tiny robot taxies hogging up their roads.

Different strokes for different folks - just because an idea won't fly where you or I lives, it don't mean it's an bad idea.

Re:Ok

[opinionbot]

Wholeheartedly agree that for trains and walking / cycling would be an excellent alternative. I own a car, but haven't driven it for over 6 months as I simply haven't needed to: walk to work (20 mins each way), walk or cycle to the shops and take the train for longer journeys.

Whilst driving can be enjoyable, there is nothing fun about motorway (freeway) driving. For long distances I'd much rather be in a train where I can walk around, stretch my legs, have a table to do some work on, even use Wifi on many of them. If I need a car where I'm going, hiring one at the other end is often pretty cheap.

Unfortunately, this is possible because I live close to the middle of town within walking distance of public transport. The dreams of living in bigger houses with individual transport far from the unwashed masses which the GP seems to object to, have lead to sprawling suburbs where it's almost impossible to walk anywhere. Either it's simply too far or because the planners assumed everyone would drive and made pavements (sidewalks) which end in 4 lane highways.

The options are then pretty limited: develop better, greener individual transport, or large-scale demolition and rebuilding in higher density areas which can be served more efficiently by public transport. Don't think the second one's going to be all that popular...

Re:Ok

[dakameleon]

With all of that being said, it will probably NEVER work in the US.

It depends - I think there are certainly areas of the US where it can work, and areas where it's unlikely to. A high-volume sector like Boston-New York-Philly-Washington DC could definitely be a target for upgrading to high-speed rail, much as Japan's main Shinkansen line is across the densest part of Honshu, connecting Hiroshima-Kyoto-Osaka/Kobe-Nagoya-Tokyo. A plane might be able to carry 200 passengers, a train 10 times that easily - so there's a pay-off point with speed and capacity of the trains with high-density and high-volume routes.

The best example I can cite with personal experience is the Eurostar from London to Paris. A tube to Kings Cross-St Pancras, onto the Eurostar in about 20 minutes, and a 2.25 hour trip to Paris Gare du Nord is far easier than a onerous trip out to Heathrow (1 hr from central London), a 2 hour check-in buffer, 1 hour flight to CDG and then transport into Paris' centre.

Re:Ok

[Rakishi]

But that's just it. You can't go down the street to Walmart for some groceries without a car.

Why not?

This is why no one rides the buses unless they can't afford anything else

No one rides the bus because is 90% of America the bus doesn't go where you want it to go, when you want it or in reasonable time. In places like NYC where it does most everyone is perfectly fine taking public transportation.

But if we surrounded every roadway used by the robot taxi network with fences (including a barrier on top),

And where would you place these magical roadways? In what empty space? Which roads would you block to existing traffic? How would you get with cross traffic?And are you aware of how bloody expensive this would be? And how ugly? NIMBY wouldn't let that get within 500 miles of them. And the first time idiot gets killed by a robotic taxi the lawsuits will kill the whole thing. Not to mention lack of street side parking, street side drop off and so on. Essentially makes the whole street near useless for all the people and businesses already on it.

Seriously, this is about the most idiotic proposal I've heard in a long time.

Re:Ok

[Splab]

I find it ironic that you claim a major disadvantage of trains is the amount you can carry and then you go on talking about flying.

Having high speed trains to major cities is a good idea, better for environment, you can carry more and you are way less constricted than on an airplane.

I'll grant you your example it doesn't make sense, but what if you wanted to go across the country? Airports are generally out in the boondocks, central train stations are quite often centrally located, less groping, better facilities, you can carry more and a train going 400 km/h isn't going that much slower than an airplane and it is a heck of a lot safer.

Re:Ok

[xaxa]

Let's suppose I want to go from Houston to Austin.

I've not been to Houston, but just 18,000 people used Houston's Amtrak station last year. For comparison, 16,000 people used the station in a village of 1,200 people in the English countryside. The nearest big city to that village, Birmingham (pop. 1M, 2M in the conurbation), has several large stations. The largest had 25.3 million passengers last year. Less people used a train in all of Texas combined than my local suburban station, which isn't even open at weekends.

I think you'll find there is demand for trains (of all kinds) in many settlements all around the world. Fortunately, most people don't reject solutions that don't satisfy 100% of the population.

I just get in my car, and from my driveway to my destination takes ~3 hours. (assuming I don't try to travel during rush hours, or I start at the outskirts of Houston)

This 160 mile journey consumes about $21 of fuel each way ...

My parents live 100 miles away. The journey by public transport takes two hours (I allow 40 minutes to get from my house halfway out of London to the appropriate main station, the inter-city journey takes 1h10, and I like to arrive 10 minutes before the train departs) and a little walking (10 minutes). Driving, according to Google, takes 2h5. That's correct -- off-peak on a Sunday. Usually it's nearer to 2½ hours on a Sunday, or 3 hours + any other day. (The train is "normal" speed, about 110mph.)

I've no idea how much the fuel costs -- I don't own a car. My parents will take the train to visit me if it's one or two of them, but if they bring my younger brother they'll drive. I always take the train, owning a car would be a huge expense for the tiny number of journeys I'd make with it.

(Commenting on the rest of your post: if Houston built high speed rail, there'd probably be intermediate stops a few miles out (e.g. 5, 10, 20 miles) which you could travel to instead of going all the way to the centre. Even if you live on the wrong side of town [like I do for visiting my parents], the railway going in the other direction should connect to the high-speed station.
30mph average for a bus is way too high, assuming you're including stops. That's a decent speed for light rail. 10mph is more like it. For a huge city like Houston, buses only every 15 minutes would be pretty crap. Buses near my house are more frequent than that all night.
If transport is reliable, you wouldn't have to wait more than a few minutes for your train. You plan to leave at the appropriate time to make the connection. How much spare time you allow depends on the cost of taking a later train [here, booking for a specific train saves money] and the time you have to wait if you miss it.
Many destinations would be within a short walk of the station.)

Re:Ok

[LWATCDR]

No you are wrong. And you are right.
Japan has good mass transit. They also have car companies. It is not a one size fits all. I would like good mass transit to go to work but I will still want my car to go shopping.

1. Yes you are right but tracks do not go everywhere and are not practical in low density areas.
2. He wanted automated cars. The idea does have some merit. I think a good step would be smart roads. To give an example from experience. Last night it took my wife and I 30 minutes to go a mile because of an accident. Had we known about the accident a short detour would have save a lot of fuel and time.
3. So you want to force people to do what you think is best. If there was a store I would probably walk over to the next block to get milk since I go for walks all the time just to walk. Too bad that there isn't one. When I did live near a small store I would often ride my bike unless it was raining, late at night, or just too hot for words. I suggest that instead of trying to force people we make it easier for them to walk or ride a bike. Side walks and bike paths will do a lot for that.
4. Again you act like one will eliminate the other. Look at all the roads in Japan. Trains help but will not eliminate traffic. You do not run trains tracks to peoples homes and you do not have them criss crossing a city. Subways are super expensive and take a very long time to build.

There is no one solution. Places like Chicago and New York have pretty good mass transit at least when I was there for work. London's tube also was pretty good. Yet each of them had cars as well.
I would say the ideal solution will vary from place to place. High speed rail makes sense in a few places in the US. Say between Boston, New York, Philidelpha, Pittsburgh, and DC. Yes I know Amtrack sort of does and it is the only part of Amtrack that is profitable. On the west coast I can see it between San Diego, LA, San Fransisco, and Las Vegas. In Texas between Houston and Dallas. I live in Florida and I have to say I am not real upset that they killed the Florida High Speed rail project. It was corporate welfare for Disney and the other theme parks. The first leg was from Orlando International to Disney and International driver. Odds are that would have been the only segment built IMHO.
What I would like to see more of are trolleys. Maybe fuel cell powered or natural gas powered hybrids so you can get ride of the over head wires and or hot rails. Up till the 50s they where very common in many US cites and worked really well. The investment would be less than subways and they can be made very attractive. And while not as low in CO2 emissions as one using overhead wires they would be more green than a bus. Also being attractive, quite, and not requireing ugly over head wires should make them easier to get past the niby objections and might actually get people to use them.

Re:Ok

[radtea]

So basically what you are saying that since it's a bad idea for the US to implement this, it's a bad idea for everyone?

I think he's saying that his part of American society is based on paranoia and class warfare, and they like it that way.

Furthermore, most of American society is fundamentally evangelical: they believe everyone should be like them. Their paranoia extends not only to the "other" in their midst, but to anyone anywhere in the world who is the least bit different from them.

Not all Americans are like this, mind. I took the city bus in LA on occasion when I lived there (the only white person in the city who didn't have a car) and the ridership was 100% Hispanic/Latino. Even the ads were in Spanish. But while I got some odd looks--I think most of the regular riders had never seen a white person on the bus before--there was no hostility or evidence of the paranoia and xenophobia so prevalent in some other parts of American society.

Re:I fail to see the point..

[Garble Snarky]

High speed rail without expensive high powered magnets, maybe?

Re:I fail to see the point..

[bluemonq]

300+ mph without all the expensive and fragile magnets required for maglev trains, while still powered by overhead electrical lines.

Great! The worst of both worlds!

[toygeek]

Its not too often you see researchers combine technologies and come up with less than the sum of their equal parts. Imagine, a transport that can crash AND derail. Woo!

Energy supply?

[MacroRodent]

This might be a good idea, if they can figure out how to supply electricity to power the flying train. Tricky, because there is no ground contact, unlike a regular train, and the track itself does not propel it forward, like a maglev track does. Otherwise it has to carry its fuel, which might negate the advantages of the idea.

Its an ekranoplan

[damburger]

This is clearly a derivative of an old Soviet vehicle. They never got much use of of them because they require a perfectly flat surface in order to work properly, hence the Japanese building a specially made track for it.

Would this really use jets?

[kyle5t]

In the graphic showing the concept for the final vehicle, the train appears to use jet engines. Is this really how you would do it? I thought that jets were pretty much dreadfully inefficient unless operated at altitude.

Re:Would this really use jets?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. They are ducted fans driven by electric motors. The tips of the vertical stabilisers have small pantographs that contact the underside of the lip at the top of the track walls. It's mostly in Japanese, but you can get the idea from some of the pictures here (e.g. this image)

Boring

[scdeimos]

Russians have been playing with huge ground-effect transports, Ekranoplans, since what - the 1960's? There's plenty of WIG (Wing In Ground effect) boats around. Hardly new stuff that needs a lot of research.

Re:I fail to see the point..

[Professeur Shadoko]

300+ mph without all the expensive and fragile magnets required for maglev trains, while still powered by overhead electrical lines.

AFAIK a good part of the trouble they had when running the french TGV to >550km/h speeds was related to the overhead electrical lines. Waves propagating along the line and preventing a good contact between the line and the train.

Plus with this kind of train, there is no ground connection. So they would need two overhead electrical lines.

Re:I fail to see the point..

[indre1]

It's all about bringing the Caspian Sea Monster back to life on dry land!

You have been warned.

Re:A bit OT but

[roman_mir]

The only spot you will find flat water surfaces is on lakes (which accounts for about 10% of global water surface).

- I think you WAY overestimate the amount of non-ocean water on this planet.

ekranoplanes don't need perfectly flat surfaces

[fantomas]

Ekranoplanes don't need perfectly flat surfaces- they were tested and ran mostly on water. Water is not perfectly flat yet the ekranoplanes ran....

Bolox

[Zemran]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgtaeRZjWNc

The Russians mastered the use of ground effect to fly 500 ton aircraft over the sea, beneath the radar. The ekranoplan was reaching speeds of 400 mph over sea in the middle of the last century. This is not even new technology. The Swedes were making them before the last war.

Re:I don't know what to say.

[simoncpu was here]

Hehe... You might find this video interesting... =)

Re:I fail to see the point..

[Fizzl]

I'm actually now designing software which calculates the parameters for the hardware that supports the power lines.
It's amazingly precise and complicated. Even at 200km/h tracks, the tolerances where the line should be in the sky are in millimeters. For example, there should be enough tension to hold the line almost straight, but not quite straight. You have to let it hang just enough so the that the weight of the line holds it firmly to the receiver on the train.
You have to account for tilted rails in turns. You have to move the line over the rails in a zig-zag so as not to stress the receiver from one point only. Then you have to account for turns, where the train goes on a nice radial track, but the line moves straight from pole to pole.
Etcetc... It is very interesting and perhaps the most math and physics hard project I have ever been involved in in my +10 year development career.

Anyway, it makes my mind boggle to even think how precise the electricity feed line has to be installed in some 500m/h tracks.

Re:A bit OT but

[teh kurisu]

I thought the problem with ground effect super freighters was that it was very hard to land them in anything other than water, and once you'd landed them in water you had to expend so much energy getting them back out that in the end it wasn't really worth it.

spaceship

[sourcerror]

" do they also have ... Space Boats?"

They have spaceships so I guess, yes.