Technology to avoid mid-air collisions will be vital when we鈥檝e all got our own helicopters
WHO wouldn鈥檛 like to have their own personal flying machine tucked away in the garage? It鈥檚 a nice thought, if perhaps a little far-fetched.
Be that as it may, the European Commission is taking the prospect seriously. And it is already worried about how squadrons of non-expert pilots are going to cope with this three-dimensional freedom. Will air hogs cause mid-air collisions?
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That鈥檚 why the EC has kicked off a 鈧�4.3 million research project, called MyCopter, that aims to ensure 鈥減ersonal aerial vehicles鈥� (PAVs) can fly automatically in neat, well-spaced 鈥渟warms鈥� by sensing the other vehicles around them.
鈥淚t is now a question of when we鈥檒l get personal aerial vehicles, not if we鈥檒l get them,鈥� claims Heinrich B眉lthoff of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in T眉bingen, Germany, who heads the project.
Why does he think the idea of PAVs is not quite so fantastic? Witness Terrafugia, he says, a spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, based in Woburn. The firm hopes next year to launch the Transition, a lightweight propeller-powered aircraft that can land on a runway, fold its wings and be driven away like a car 鈥� although not everything has gone to plan (see 鈥淔lying cars: a chequered history鈥�). What鈥檚 more, technologies for lofting and propelling small aircraft are maturing fast, B眉lthoff says, thanks to recent developments in helicopter drones.
Despite Terrafugia鈥檚 progress, MyCopter is only focusing on helicopter-style PAVs because they won鈥檛 need a runway: you can take off from a parking space. 鈥淲e are looking at vertical take-off and landing because we don鈥檛 want to use airports for air commuting. There鈥檚 a problem, however: we don鈥檛 expect the average car driver to know how to fly a helicopter.鈥�
To begin to address this, MyCopter project members 鈥� including researchers at the University of Liverpool in the UK and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) 鈥� aim to establish rules for autonomous flight, including sensing, flocking, control and simulation, and to develop simple user interfaces for pilots.
Accurate sensing will be at the heart of it all. At EPFL, Dario Floreano鈥檚 team is investigating what mix of anti-collision sensors PAVs might need. He envisages each craft pinging radio signals to all the others and measuring the signals鈥� return time to keep a safe distance. 鈥淚t will work even when GPS is not available,鈥� Floreano says, adding that such a system is now being tested on a swarm of 10 four-rotor robots, as part of the EC-funded Swarmanoid project.
Floreano鈥檚 team has already developed image sensors with a wraparound view like that of an insect鈥檚 compound eye. If visibility is poor, acoustic sensors may do the trick. 鈥淵ou can work out the speed and direction of approaching aircraft from the sound they make,鈥� Floreano says. Radar and laser-based sensors (lidar) will also be tested. The EPFL team hopes to build a demonstration sensor array by 2014.
PAVs might not be entirely autonomous, says B眉lthoff. You should be able to override them, just as drivers can ignore satnav directions in a car, he says.
Fortunately, MyCopter will have other applications before we eventually take delivery of our first personal helicopter: the flocking algorithms developed will make it easier for drones to fly in civilian airspace, and simpler user interfaces could make it easier to fly them. As for replacing cars, the technology鈥檚 there, says B眉lthoff. 鈥淢aking it affordable is another question.鈥�
Flying cars: a chequered history
That flying cars are a long-held dream is evident from the patent record: one was patented in France three months before the Wright brothers鈥� first powered flight in 1903. But success has .
In 1917, the Wrights鈥� arch-rival Glenn Curtiss built a flying car that would only hop. In 1956 Moulton Taylor鈥檚 Aerocar took to the US skies, but never went into mass production.
Now Terrafugia, an MIT spin-off, is hoping its Transition flying car will triumph. It is built from lightweight carbon fibre composites and has a light, powerful engine. But after a successful test flight in March 2009 problems with suppliers have slowed progress: a demo flight this year has been postponed to 2012.
