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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?
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.
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.
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.
Damn right! We want driving helicopters!
#DeleteFacebook
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.
If you had a flying car, that worked economically somehow, you would just restrict it to hovering a foot off the ground. Perfect for countries with decaying and non existent transportation infrastructure.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
"It's a falling machine. I'm so impressed."
At the rate we're going, your grandchildren will be huddling in a cave trying to hook up an old car alternator to a paddle wheel so they can charge a 12V lead acid battery.
Your lucky grandchildren.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
If you had a flying car, that worked economically somehow, you would just restrict it to hovering a foot off the ground.
Nope. That would be a truly terrible idea, because without ground contact you've got no way to stop rapidly. It's the same reason we don't use hovercraft. With modern control systems, a human could probably avoid running into every damned thing... but only if nothing unexpected ever happened.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Paddle wheel! Luxury! Why in my day, we had to weave a rope out of our body hair, wrap one end around the shaft of the alternator and the other end around whichever child had been particularly bad that week, and push them off of a cliff.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I tend to rant.
Toss it the closet with the Moller Sky Car
"If you had a flying car, that worked economically somehow, you would just restrict it to hovering a foot off the ground."
That's called a ground-effect machine, aka hovercraft and they work quite well. You can buy one if you really want one. There are practical uses. e.g. if you happen to inherit a small island complete with creepy mansion in the middle of a swamp from a long forgotten uncle
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
The dimensions are specified in millimeters, which is annoying. I would have used attoparsecs, personally.
And km/hr? What is that in furlongs per fortnight?
Key Features:
1. Worlds Smallest
I need an empirical measurement in trumphands.
2. Take off from public roads
Cool. How about landing, aka crashing?
3. Intuitive operation
I grew up with Japanese VCRs. I've never been tempted to use the word "intuitive" in relation to a Japanese product with a user interface.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
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.
Toyota Demos A Flying Car. It Crashes.
which is actually:
Small Startup's Experimental Passenger Drone Not Ready for Prime Time.
That's hardly a clickbaitable article title though.
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?
Lick my balls, pal. If I wanted to be blasted by slang all day, I'd be reading FARK.
Parent is the type that would use curse words in a masters thesis for "flavor."
Apparently, you don't know the difference between slang and a contraction.
Seems pretty widespread from a casual Google search, mentioned without fanfare on dictionary and grammar sites.
i think you'd find it hard to argue that it's slang or uncommon or unconventional usage.
I think it's just your pet-peeve of how you think English should work versus how it does.