Transport Future
GM and Segway unveiled the Project PUMA, a two-seat rickshaw minus a rick that uses the Segway's electric systems to glide around on two wheels. Capable of carrying 700 pounds in a frame about half the size of a Smart car, the PUMA (Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility) can spin on a pin and "bows" to let passengers in and out.
Opening a car trunk or controlling a home air conditioner could become just a wish away with Honda's new technology that connects thoughts inside a brain with robotics. Honda Motor Co. has developed a way to read patterns of electric currents on a person's scalp as well as changes in cerebral blood flow when a person thinks about four simple movements—moving the right hand, moving the left hand, running and eating. Honda succeeded in analyzing such thought patterns, and then relaying them as wireless commands for Asimo, its human-shaped robot.
In calling its new family sedan the "Model S," Tesla likely wants to evoke the Model T of days gone by. The implication is that this new electric car will be accessible to mainstream Americans -- and that it will radically change the way people travel from one place to another.
Woburn, Mass.-based Terrafugia Inc., founded four years ago by MIT graduates, reported today that its Transition "roadable" aircraft completed its first flight at Plattsburgh International Airport in Plattsburgh, N.Y. on March 5 with retired U.S. Air Force Col. Phil Meteer at the controls. The short flight was confined to the expanse of the runway, but it was enough to allow the company to test the Transition's stability and controllability.
Is it a car? Is it a plane? Actually it's both. The first flying automobile, equally at home in the sky or on the road, is scheduled to take to the air next month. If it survives its first test flight, the Terrafugia Transition, which can transform itself from a two-seater road car to a plane in 15 seconds, is expected to land in showrooms in about 18 months' time.
Monday's death-defying jet-pack flight across Colorado's Royal Gorge was only the beginning, says an official with the company behind the feat. Eric Scott of Jet Pack International (Jet P.I.) used a standard hydrogen peroxide-fueled jet pack to get across the 1,250-foot-deep gorge south of Denver, breaking his own record by traveling 1,500 feet horizontally. But his entire flight lasted only 20 seconds. The maximum flight time for a hydrogen-peroxide pack is about 45 seconds, though one company in California has recently extended that to 75 seconds by mixing in a little kerosene.
A British engineer has invented a fan-powered flying car - and to prove the Skycar works, he's off to Africa in it
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