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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.
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.
If you want to know why self-driving cars are a LONG way off, just got to the self-checkout counter at your nearest major retailer. Notice the human sitting near the self-checkouts? Watch how many times said human has to come running to override a confused checkout computer that freaks out if someone does something as simple as prematurely move an item out of the bagging area. And keep in mind that this is the dirt-simple task of simply checking out a customer who is doing almost all the work themselves already.
If modern computers can't even manage to do something that simple, consistently without constant human intervention, do you really think they're anywhere near ready to handle the 1000x more complicated task of driving a car through poorly-marked city and rural streets without a human there to keep them from potentially causing major carnage?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I have always through that these delivery companies investing into drone tech should be considering artillery style delivery. We have so much experience with delivering "things" with pin point accuracy. And parachutes, are extremely energy cheap, while catapults, trebuchets, and electromagnetic cannons are extremely efficient. A cannon built up the side of a skyscraper should be able to accelerate packages to tremendous speeds, then you just need a few parachutes and some remote controlled fins to nudge the package into alignment and you should be able to deliver packages to any rooftop or backyard in the entire city in seconds.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
A trebuchet could easily launch 90 kilograms worth of groceries over a distance of 300 meters.
Fetchez la vache!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
A cannon built up the side of a skyscraper should be able to accelerate packages to tremendous speeds, then you just need a few parachutes and some remote controlled fins to nudge the package into alignment and you should be able to deliver packages to any rooftop or backyard in the entire city in seconds.
And when the chute fails to open, and you deliver the package to the wrong rooftop or backyard or face?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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."
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
link?
link!
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