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Personal Flying Machine Contest Gets 600 Entries (fastcompany.com)
"A giant egg equipped with rotors and 'Transformers'-style robots are among some of the creative designs submitted in a $2 million dollar contest to dream up new ways of flying," reports CNN.
"GoFly, a $2 million competition to design personal flying machines backed by Boeing, has announced its first round of most promising designs out of 600 entries from around the world," writes harrymcc . "Proposed vehicles need to fly for at least 20 miles, at 35 miles an hour; many of the ideas look a bit like airborne motorcycles." Fast Company reports: "There's been a convergence of all of these breakthrough technologies that makes this the first moment in time where we have the ability to make people fly," says Gwen Lighter, who dreamed up the GoFly prize, recruited Boeing to bankroll it, and now serves as CEO. Many of the advances come from the world of drones -- "high-efficiency motors, high-capacity batteries, and cheap navigation and stabilizing technologies that keep even newbies on course and out of danger....
Their prototypes have to achieve vertical takeoff and landing (called VTOL), eliminating the need for an airport runway... The craft have to be small enough to fit within an 8.5-foot circle, and they have to be safe and manageable for anyone to operate -- "not just engineers or daredevils... GoFly's Lighter emphasizes that safety is a key requirement in judging. She says that whatever wins will be well on the way to meeting requirements of the FAA -- and regulatory bodies in other countries -- for mainstream operation. FAA staffers (in a non-official capacity) are even among GoFly's expert advisors.
Best of all, every participant -- even those who win the prize money -- "are free to take their innovations anywhere. They retain all intellectual property rights."
"GoFly, a $2 million competition to design personal flying machines backed by Boeing, has announced its first round of most promising designs out of 600 entries from around the world," writes harrymcc . "Proposed vehicles need to fly for at least 20 miles, at 35 miles an hour; many of the ideas look a bit like airborne motorcycles." Fast Company reports: "There's been a convergence of all of these breakthrough technologies that makes this the first moment in time where we have the ability to make people fly," says Gwen Lighter, who dreamed up the GoFly prize, recruited Boeing to bankroll it, and now serves as CEO. Many of the advances come from the world of drones -- "high-efficiency motors, high-capacity batteries, and cheap navigation and stabilizing technologies that keep even newbies on course and out of danger....
Their prototypes have to achieve vertical takeoff and landing (called VTOL), eliminating the need for an airport runway... The craft have to be small enough to fit within an 8.5-foot circle, and they have to be safe and manageable for anyone to operate -- "not just engineers or daredevils... GoFly's Lighter emphasizes that safety is a key requirement in judging. She says that whatever wins will be well on the way to meeting requirements of the FAA -- and regulatory bodies in other countries -- for mainstream operation. FAA staffers (in a non-official capacity) are even among GoFly's expert advisors.
Best of all, every participant -- even those who win the prize money -- "are free to take their innovations anywhere. They retain all intellectual property rights."
There are many obvious possibilities. Besides the simple excitement of personal flight, even quite expensive devices would be invaluable for remote survey work, for emergency work above the reach of ladders among taller modern buildings, and floodplain emergency work when roads or entire towns are unapproachable due to flooding.
If you are seriously not interested in PFMs, then you are not a nerd, and you are on the wrong website. Go back to Pinterest.
Now, to get back on topic, what material is everyone else using to 3D print propellers?
Can anyone explain why I or anyone else should care about personal flying machines?...
It's a sensible question. Let me fly in the face of sth.
/. is news for nerds, stuff that matters. /. category.
/. community. Even if it's just one nerd.
/. cares. Someone else.
Airplanes are technology, a bona fide
Airplanes have a lot of fans in the nerd communities.
Therefore, a personal flying machine contest does matter to some in the
ipso facto, someone on
Me.
I confess, I've gone to Air Shows to see the warbirds of old, and to watch the Blue Angles do their thing. Even got a ride in a way-too-old cargo plane once. They opened these huge doors as they flew to the mountains and back. Probably just to give us noobs a thrill. It worked. Went right up there and looked down. Better than anything Disney.
Electric motors are great in terms of power to weight, efficiency, reliability, control ability, and size to weight. Batteries still suck and are heavy, getting a 20 minute run time isn't going to be easy. Until batteries improve an order of magnitude, a hybrid design may be the best bet. Gas powered engines are far more efficient when run at a single rpm, they can be compact and reliable, and generate the majority of the power for the craft with a much smaller battery pack and much lighter overall weight for extended run time applications.
There are many obvious possibilities. Besides the simple excitement of personal flight, even quite expensive devices would be invaluable for remote survey work,
A job better-handled by UAV.
for emergency work above the reach of ladders among taller modern buildings,
Do you imagine that there's a lot of this? Better solved with helis which can carry more than one person.
and floodplain emergency work when roads or entire towns are unapproachable due to flooding.
Also better solved with helis.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Are any of these real engineered designs - where the main technical challenges of energy storage, power density, noise and safety have been addressed? Otherwise its just like then endless versions of the Moller "sky car", which is beautiful, but which I also remember from the late 80s, without any production models.
People have been talking about flying cars and have flown some test models since the 1930s. Useful "sky cars" in the form of helicopters have existed for well over half a century. What is missing is a solution to the difficult technical issues that make them impractical for mass use (beyond what we have now for helicopters). Pretty fiberglass shapes really doesn't address the basic issue.