09 10 201548 IT S MAGIC Even enthusiastic tinkerers admit that their ideas are hardly suited for a mass market They say the manufacturers would stick with the production of vehicles for specialized tasks rang ing from police work to emergency management plus a limited number of vehicles for well heeled privileged owners But even when carbon fiber is no more expensive than sheet met al and the flying car is affordable more new traffic problems would be created than old ones solved Traffic jams on the street could move into airspace This can be a nightmare for the Trans port Ministry where people are just now trying to get a handle on the rapidly growing number of whirring drones in the air At least the weight of the flying cars mostly around 750 kilo grams presents a safety advantage If the powertrain fails a parachute can bring the damaged vehicle softly down to earth as was the case during a test flight of a Slovakian Aeromobile The company has given assurances that pilot and developer Stefan Klein was uninjured His parachute saved him But the landing zone can hardly be specified in the case of this type of emergency landing So first and foremost it is crucial to avoid crashes and collisions For one thing this requires a large quan tity of sensors to some degree double machine functions and perfectly coordinated airspace monitoring There is no central ized computer that monitors and controls all flight movements from the ground and experts believe it is not worth pursuing The risk is too great if the all seeing eye loses sight of an ob ject The flying car must find its own way like a self piloted road vehicle and this applies to its orientation as well as traffic The sensor system with radar and cameras is already largely available The next stage is looming for the automobile as well communication between vehicles The network is already com plete for large commercial aircraft They communicate with one another using the ADS B Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast system They determine their position direction of flight and speed with the help of satellite navigation such as GPS or the Russian Glonass system and send the data along with the flight number vehicle type flight altitude and time signal once per second at 1090 megahertz out into the environment ADS B would also be an option for mini helicopters or flying cars It is inexpensive doesn t take up much space and functions with much greater precision than typical radar The graphic display of the airspace environment and the aircraft moving around in side it on a central display represents purely passive system The pilot must correct the course of his aircraft on his own to avoid collisions and he is obligated legally to do so Pilot s license And here lies one of the greatest obstacles to manned automat ic aviation As the law now stands anyone who takes to the air needs a pilot s license But getting one is an involved ex pensive process and it scares many customers off In the US innovative companies have now pressed home the view that flying cars should be seen as light sport aircraft In this way the expense for licensing stays within limits This measure may improve the opportunities for flying cars in the market but it does not increase safety Heinrich Buelthoff of the Max Planck Institute in Tuebingen Germany warns that not every driver can be transformed into a pilot That s why this team wants to go a step further At the Institute for Biological Cybernetics scientists are working on an algorithm that makes it possible for aircraft to execute evasions on their own In a simulation researchers have already sent 50 floating flying objects at each other in a ring without a crash occurring Tests of artificial Fliegende Autos Essay 63 02 2015 2 4 5 3 1 Das amerikanische Projekt Terrafugia TF X ist ein Senkrechtstarter mit schwenkbaren Propellern aber bisher reine Zukunftsmusik Geschätzte Entwicklungszeit acht bis zwölf Jahre 2 Der Terrafugia Transition braucht eine Startbahn von 518 Metern schafft laut Hersteller 160 km h und hat eine Reichweite von 660 Kilometern 3 Als Flugzeug hat der Transition eine Spannweite von acht Metern Im Fahrbetrieb werden die Flügel eingeklappt Das Gefährt ist dann noch 2 3 Meter breit 4 Das europäische Projekt MyCopter ist ein Gyrocopter mit mehreren Rotoren Er ist als reines Fluggerät konzipiert das keine Start und Landebahn benötigt 5 Das Cockpit des MyCopter sieht nicht viel anders aus als das eines Autos Er soll auch von Fluglaien möglichst einfach zu bedienen sein Europe s MyCopter project is a gyrocopter with several rotors It is conceived as a flying contraption that doesn t need a runway for takeoff and landing Ill us tr at io n M yC op te r

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