보잉, 초소형 승객 탑승 드론 개발 야심 Check out these wacky designs from Boeing’s $2 million passenger drone contest
Check out these wacky designs from Boeing’s $2 million passenger drone contest
One day, in the not-too-distant future, we could well be zipping about the skies in our very own personal flying machines. It may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but Boeing, a company that knows a thing or two about keeping objects airborne, said in March that electric-powered passenger drones could be on the market within a decade.
보잉, 초소형 승객 탑승 드론 개발 야심
멀지 않은 미래, 우린 개인전용 날으는 머신에서 속도를 즐기게 될 것이다.
공상과학같은 소리로 들릴지 모르겠지만
보잉은 이를 현실화하고 있다.
올 3월에 전기동력으로 움직이는 승객 탑승 드론이
10년 내에 시장에 선보일 수 있을 것이라고 말하고 있다.
보잉사는 GoodFly디자인 공모전에 2백만달러를 후원했으며
최소 충전없이 32km를 비행할 수 있는 혁신적인 초소형 날으는
자동차의 개발을 목표로 하고 있다.
황기철 콘페이퍼 에디터 큐레이터
Ki Chul Hwang, conpaper editor, curator
Boeing is so confident that urban vehicles are about to transform the city landscape that last year the company sponsored the GoFly design contest to the tune of $2 million.
Aimed at encouraging innovative designs for ultra-compact personal flying vehicles, entries had to be able to take off and land vertically, and fly for at least 20 miles without recharging.
Teams from 30 countries submitted their efforts, and this week the organizers revealed the 10 winners who now have to transform their drawings into real, fully functional aircraft.
Chosen by an international panel of judges that included chief engineers, flight test engineers, pilots, and esteemed academics, the winning designs range from the familiar to the outright wacky.
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Take, for example, Texas A&M University’s Harmony, described as a “compact rotorcraft designed to minimize noise and maximize efficiency, safety, reliability, and flight experience.” It’s the only design among the winners where you seem to have to stand upright in a kind of pod, making for a different kind of flying experience.
Aeroxo LV from Latvia came up with the Era Aviabike, which looks like a cross between a plane and a motorbike, while Georgia Tech’s HummingBuzz appears to place the rider directly over one very large rotor blade. A protective grill serves to eliminate the chance of any troublesome decapitations during flight.
The multimillion-dollar prize fund will be handed out gradually over the next year — the 10 winners of this first stage of the contest have each collected $20,000 to help make their designs a reality.
Phase two of the contest, where teams build prototypes, is actually open to newcomers as well, so the winning design could be one we haven’t even seen yet.
The teams behind the best four prototypes will each pick up a further $50,000 next spring, and the overall winner will be announced at the Final Fly-off event in the fall of 2019.
Interest is clearly growing in the idea of small, electric-powered, urban-compatible aircraft that are quieter and easier to handle than a helicopter.
Airbus-backed Vahana, for example, is developing self-piloting air taxi, and you may have already seen the 184 flying machine from Chinese firm EHang. Uber is working on its own aerial vehicle, as are Joby Aviation, Volocopter, and Kitty Hawk.
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