FEATURE MOVING TECHNOLOGYYELLOW CAB
CORA AIR TAXIHow often have you been sat in traffic, wishing you
could just fly above it all? Well, Cora, a flying electric
taxi, could be the answer.
It’s piloted autonomously, which means that pretty
much anyone could fly in it without training. Twelve
lift fans get Cora off the ground vertically, before it flies
like an aircraft using a single propeller at the rear. This
means it could take off from a car park or the roof of an
office building, carrying its two passengers home – as
long as they live within its 100-kilometre range.
Kitty Hawk Corporation, the California-based
company behind Cora, envisages that you would book a
trip aboard much like you do with an airline or a ride
share. But how soon we’ll be able to do that is unclear- Cora still needs regulatory approval before it can
operate commercially. There’s good reason to believe it
will happen, though: Kitty Hawk is funded by
billionaire Google co-founder Larry Page and is working
with both Boeing and Air New Zealand.
TELEPATHIC TRANSPORT
MERCEDES-BENZ FUTURE BUSBus rides are set to get a 21st-Century makeover. The
Mercedes-Benz Future Bus is fitted with a GPS system,
cameras and radar, so it can drive itself along its route,
stopping to pick up passengers along the way. All the driver
needs to do is watch out for hazards, intervening with a dab
on the brake or a touch of the steering wheel.
Future Bus has other tricks up its sleeve, too. Perhaps
the most impressive is its ability to ‘talk’ with traffic lights
using its ‘vehicle to infrastructure’ system, so it can find
out when they are about to change, gently slowing down
if necessary. All of this technology is designed to provide
passengers with a smoother service and relieve the workload
on drivers.
Although Future Bus was successfully tested on
a 20-kilometre route from Schiphol Airport in the
Netherlands, it will still require several million kilometres’
more testing before it can go into production. But Mercedes
owner Daimler says that these kinds of technologies will be
increasingly built into its buses in order to assist drivers.MOVING TECHNOLOGY FEATURE TRANSPORT REVOLUTIONYELLOW CAB
CORA AIR TAXI
How often have you been sat in traffic, wishing you
could just fly above it all? Well, Cora, a flying electric
taxi, could be the answer.
It’s piloted autonomously, which means that pretty
much anyone could fly in it without training. Twelve
lift fans get Cora off the ground vertically, before it flies
like an aircraft using a single propeller at the rear. This
means it could take off from a car park or the roof of an
office building, carrying its two passengers home – as
long as they live within its 100-kilometre range.
Kitty Hawk Corporation, the California-based
company behind Cora, envisages that you would book a
trip aboard much like you do with an airline or a ride
share. But how soon we’ll be able to do that is unclear
- Cora still needs regulatory approval before it can
operate commercially. There’s good reason to believe it
will happen, though: Kitty Hawk is funded by
billionaire Google co-founder Larry Page and is working
with both Boeing and Air New Zealand.
TELEPATHIC TRANSPORT
MERCEDES-BENZ FUTURE BUSBus rides are set to get a 21st-Century makeover. The
Mercedes-Benz Future Bus is fitted with a GPS system,
cameras and radar, so it can drive itself along its route,
stopping to pick up passengers along the way. All the driver
needs to do is watch out for hazards, intervening with a dab
on the brake or a touch of the steering wheel.
Future Bus has other tricks up its sleeve, too. Perhaps
the most impressive is its ability to ‘talk’ with traffic lights
using its ‘vehicle to infrastructure’ system, so it can find
out when they are about to change, gently slowing down
if necessary. All of this technology is designed to provide
passengers with a smoother service and relieve the workload
on drivers.
Although Future Bus was successfully tested on
a 20-kilometre route from Schiphol Airport in the
Netherlands, it will still require several million kilometres’
more testing before it can go into production. But Mercedes
owner Daimler says that these kinds of technologies will be
increasingly built into its buses in order to assist drivers.FEATURE TRANSPORT REVOLUTION