Carnegie Mellon scientists to create 'flying car'
Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute has been awarded a 17-month, $988,000 government contract to build a flight system for a project aimed at developing a ground vehicle with the ability to fly.
The funding comes from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research and development branch of the U.S. Department of Defense.
The "flying car" project, dubbed the Transformer (TX) Program, is described as a four-person vehicle that could carry 1,000 pounds of cargo up to 250 miles by land or air. Because it would have the ability to make vertical takeoffs and landings, the developers believe the vehicle would be less predictable and harder to target.
Advocates believe such a vehicle would be useful for scouting, resupply and medical evacuation among other missions.
"The TX is all about flexibility of movement and key to that concept is the idea that the vehicle could be operated by a soldier without pilot training," said Sanjiv Singh, research professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon. "In practical terms, that means the vehicle will need to be able to fly itself, or to fly with only minimal input from the operator. And this means the vehicle has to be continuously aware of its environment and be able to automatically react in response to what it perceives."
This DiscoveryNews video includes some images of what the flying car may look like:
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