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Toyota Demos A Flying Car. It Crashes. (ap.org)
thomst shares the AP's report on Toyota's latest venture. From the article:
A startup backed by the Japanese automaker has developed a test model that engineers hope will eventually develop into a tiny car with a driver who'll be able to light the Olympic torch in the 2020 Tokyo games. For now, however, the project is a concoction of aluminum framing and eight propellers that barely gets off the ground and crashes after several seconds... At a test flight Saturday in the city where the automaker is based, the gadgetry, about the size of a car and loaded with batteries and sensors, blew up a lot of sand and made a lot of noise. It managed to get up as high as eye level for several seconds before tilting and falling to the ground... After several attempts, the endeavor had to be canceled after one of the covers got detached from the frame and broke, damaging the propellers.
Project leader Tsubasa Nakamura envisions seamlessly transitioning from driving to flight like the DeLorean in Back To The Future, and his team still plans to perform their first manned flights by 2019.
Project leader Tsubasa Nakamura envisions seamlessly transitioning from driving to flight like the DeLorean in Back To The Future, and his team still plans to perform their first manned flights by 2019.
link?
DAISY, Daisy, give me your answer, do.
I guess we need self-flying cars more than we need self-driving ones then.
Like AI and autonomous cars, flying cars are right around the corner. And since I had a C64 in my youth, and now my computer today is 10000x faster, computers in the future will be even more powerful than today. After all: progress is inevitable.
The dimensions are specified in millimeters, which is annoying.
I would have used attoparsecs, personally..
Think about all the idiots on the road you see every day. Now think about how much more damage they could do in a super powerful aircraft bearing down at you from 200 feet in the air.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Dubai has all-electric helicopters in service today. Something wrong with that?
Oh, did the idea of a helicopter blow up your idea of what is cool?
Everyone knows how safe helicopters are, yes?
That's right. We don't actually want flying cars.
I'm having difficulty seeing what the trouble is. There's a whole bunch of existing drone technology -- sensors, controllers -- that they could leverage. Is it Not Invented Here syndrome, and are they trying to start from scratch? Or is there some issue with scaling the technology up to the size of a car? We already have drone platforms that can be ridden and controlled by a human.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Cars and crowds on the ground are already dangerous. Now give someone the ability to fly over barriers or hit floors of buildings. Not going to be licensed. Think that UK concert explosion was bad enough with a suicide vest, give the guy a car full of explosives and let him dive into the middle.
and not a Skydrive?
Huh?
It's "A startup backed by the Japanese automaker" (From the first line of the f**king summary). The same way Morgan Stanley is maintaining a short-message based social network (Morgan Stanley is a backer of Twitter).
Looking at the specs they claim a flight altitude of 10 meters. This is quite likely within the range of ground effect meaning it cannot attain "flight" as many would understand it. This may also be merely a way to get around a lot of rules from the FAA and similar government agencies around the world and not have to go through the more rigorous testing required for a powered aircraft.
This vehicle should not be that difficult to design. We've been making quad-copters for a long time now and so a lot of the math has been done. Just scale up to the point it can carry a person. Unless the problem is a matter of optimization, they are trying to find out just how cheap they can make this for market.
Anyway, with a listed maximum altitude of ten meters this is less a "flying car" and more a hovercraft or ground effect vehicle.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
In the future, when anti-gravity tech becomes common, our grandchildren will laugh at us and our air-pushing flying machines.
"It's a falling machine. I'm so impressed."
The sad part is that we have had the open-source software/firmware to do stable multirotors for many, many, many years. This is open-source stuff you can look at and see exactly how it works. Yet these well-funded morons can't make it work. Good job? Fucking kids.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
B... B.. But according to the Slashdot autists, next year an autonomous drone will be dropping off "Roofbots" to replace the roof of my house, then fly them away when done with zero intervention.
Something something AI exponential something something.
Love the units used for the specs on that site. Discussing a car like it's a PC component.
We can't just say "2.9 m length, 1.3 m width...". e__e
I love flying. The public loves the idea of flying cars. But flying cars are not a particularly good idea. They are energy intensive, far more than rolling cars. In addition to be wasteful of energy they're also noisy, dangerous and not particularly practical.
In the movies we all love, or hate, the flying cars are held up by wires or arms so they seem to be silently gliding along. Real flying cars have to do a lot of work to fight gravity and stay up. This ends up being noisy because they're wind effect machines. They're not silently surfing gravity or mysterious force fields. They're pushing air down hard enough to stay up. It is really not sexy and certainly not silent.
A lot of drivers are unable to navigate in 2D on the ground. Adding another dimension up in the air makes it that much harder for your typical Joe Blowshotair to drive. Expect a lot more accidents.
What gets more exciting is those accidents are going to be up above your head.
If you thought people flying camera drones over your house was bad, or ATVs & snowmobiles, then just wait until you have to deal with loud, dangerous, invasive flying cars zipping over your back yard and home.
Flying cars are a really bad idea.
Using words like this in the summary demonstrate that the EDITORS HERE ARE MENTALLY RETARDED.
:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I tend to rant.
Toss it the closet with the Moller Sky Car
Call me Mr. Positive Thinking and assume someone will use a flying car to do a drive-by. Do they get away with it?
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
the project leader's name is Tsubasa (wings)...
Making a big story about this is like writing headlines about "fail" babies who trip on the carpet at 10 months old. It stinks like an attempt to make people laugh at Toyota and nothing more.
Yet another group is placing a bunch of motor/propellor units on an "airframe" and calling it a flying car. Bad design. Very bad. The loss of any one of those powerplant/propeller combinations means the thing now "flies" just slightly better than a grand piano. Jeezuz, even a helicopter gives it's pilot at least a shot at a good landing (defined as one you can walk away from) in an engine-out scenario. This design has been a horrible idea since Moller came up with it, what, fifty years ago?
and then blow it out as they fly off.