“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.”
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot