Flying Cars May Be Closer To Reality Than You Think

by Judith DubinThe glimpse of 2015 provided by the 1989 classic “Back to the Future Part II” had an impressive hit rate for what we’d accomplish by then, from flat-screen TVs to the same sort of video conferencing that apps like Skype and Face Time provide. And other predictions, like the Chicago Cubs breaking their century-long championship drought and winning the World Series, were only off by a year. We don’t, however, have flying cars.But, while cars like the ones that jet around in the movie won’t be here anytime that soon, they almost definitely will happen, according to roboticist and University of Pennsylvania professor Vijay Kumar. There’s just a few hurdles we’ll have to overcome first.As Kumar explains, the basic skeleton of what would make a flying car possible already exists today — we just think of them as flying robots, or drones. But the drones of today will require substantial hardware and software tweaks to truly become flying cars.For one, their energy source will need to be amped up, since the battery-powered electric motors used to lift drones off the ground aren’t powerful enough to lug people around too. Instead, we’ll probably turn to the same sort of fuel used for planes, which will power mini-jet turbines to carry us to and fro.More importantly but actually easier to make a reality, Kumar says, is the software that will let flying cars maneuver around the air. Given the logistics of moving along a fully three-dimensional highway, our Jetson-inspired vehicles will have to be largely self-driving. And that means they’ll need to instantly process and react to different types of information all at once, from GPS coordinates to the radio communication signals they get from other cars.That might seem scary at first glance, but once optimized, automation will actually make driving safer and more efficient than ever before, says Kumar. Unsurprisingly, that’s partly why scientists, car manufacturers, and tech companies are so eager to get self-driving cars onto the plain old ground. Already, multiple companies are testing the first prototypes out on the road, though not without some hiccups involved.Lastly, once cars get airborne, that’ll also change (for the better) how we build cities, says Kumar. “There’s only so many roads you can build,” he notes. “and there’s only so much infrastructure you can build around those roads.”Although you might not want to throw out the keys to your junky old jalopy just yet, it’s not also crazy to start dreaming of what will be. “[F]lying cars are not as far away as you think,” says Kumar. “The future is closer than you imagine.”
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