Roads that glow, cars that fly appear in crystal ball of transportation

By Thomas Frey

Transportation technology is progressing at a much slower pace than some of the other sciences such as information technology, biotech and nano-technology. As an example, the world’s human speed record was set in 1969, a full 37 years ago, when Thomas Stafford, John Young and Gene Cernan flew in Apollo 10 at 24,790 mph.

While there is much talk about flying at a speed that approaches the speed of light, very little effort is actually being expanded in this area. But transportation technology is about to move ahead more rapidly in the coming years with the advent of two radically new technologies -— frictionless vehicles and binary power.

Throughout history we have learned that the two principle driving forces of humanity are freedom and control. While current automotive technology gives us the freedom to drive as fast or slow as our vehicle will take us and control. Over our timing and direction, we still are restricted to driving on the ground, and we have a hornet’s nest of laws to contend with regarding speed, flow and operation.
Understanding freedom and control is key to understanding the future of transportation. Any new forms of transportation that do not measurably improve our sense of freedom or give us added control of our lives likely will fall n the marketplace.

In the near future, automotive companies will focus on fully automated vehicles where people can “punch in” or “speak” the place they want to go to and the vehicle will automatically take them there. This “control feature” will open up huge additional markets for automotive companies to sell to the elderly, families with kids too young to drive, and the visually, physically and mentally impaired. The arrival of fully automated navigation systems for ground- based vehicles will set the stage for fully automated navigation systems for flying vehicles.

Here are a few other transportation landmarks that will help pave the way for the more significant innovations:

• By 2010, personal transportation devices will be all the rage, and electric shoes with built-in roller-skates will be gaining much of the attention. After nine years of heavy media coverage, the Segway Human Transporter wifi begin to gain serious market share.

• By 2015, traditional gas-powered autos will start to decline with electric automobiles and hybrids taking up most of the slack.

• By 2020, we will see an industry being built up around self-illuminating highways — highways that glow in the dark. “Glow roads” will dramatically change the nighttime aesthetics of major cities and will be shown to improve driving safety at night and reduce the need for streetlights.

• By 2025, a first attempt at launching the space elevator will fail, setting the industry back a decade.

• Around 2030 we will see commercialization of the first friction-free, no-moving-parts flying vehicles, which will be considered by many to be the ultimate freedom machine. Much like the transition from analog to digital in the world of information technology, the study of traditional mechanics and traditional aerodynamics will be replaced with a new physics governing vehicular movement.
Even today, flying cars are very much on the radar screen to become a next generation automotive technology. They will begin with a more convenient version of today’s airplanes and eventually convert over to the frictionless cars.

• The flying car era will really begin around 2015 with flying drones. Flying drones will be used by FedEx and UPS to deliver packages, Pizza Hut to deliver pizzas, and Kroger and Safeway to deliver groceries. But beyond that, drones will enable homes to be taken off the grid with delivery of water and electricity (changing out batteries for the home), trash and sewage pickup, and much more. These too will begin as air-powered vehicles and later convert to frictionless drones.

Six key technological breakthroughs will be needed for the first generation of flying cars to become viable: fully automated navigation systems, directional layering of airspace, low-impact vertical takeoff, convenient fly-drive capability, silent engines and specialized safety systems.

• Fully automated navigation systems. The average person has a difficult time navigating on a two-dimensional surface. The flying car industry will not be able to “get off the ground” without an onboard navigator that “handles the driving.” Yes, people will want the freedom of being able to do some creative maneuvering in certain situations, but that will only be allowed in rare instances.

• Directional layering of airspace. With several hundred thousand vehicles flying over a city, there will need to be an organized system for managing the traffic. Having all vehicles at a particular altitude traveling the same direction will eliminate many problems.

For example, all vehicles traveling at 1,000-foot altitude would be traveling due north, at 1,010-foot altitude 1 degree east of due north, 1,020-foot altitude 2 degrees east of due north, etc. Vehicles would spiral up or down to make their turns. While not a perfect solution because the North Pole becomes a crash point for those flying due north, it does represent a good starting point for engineering a solution.

• Low-impact vertical takeoff. For use by the average person, flying cars cannot have a runway requirement. They need to take off and land vertically without blowing the leaves off trees or shutters off houses.

• Convenient fly-drive capability. As humanity makes the transition from ground-based autos to flying cars, there will be a need for both driving on the ground and flying in the air.

• Silent engines. Very few cities will want to put up with the noise of several hundred thousand flying vehicles if they all sound like airplanes today.

• Specialized safety systems. To date, both aircraft and airspace have been closely controlled by organizations such as the FAA and the NTSB to ensure the safety of the flying public. Because of the sheer volume of vehicles and the lower caliber of individuals allowed to fly, additional safety measures will have to be in place. Safety technologies will include collision avoidance systems and drop-out-of-the-sky emergency air bags on the outside of vehicles.

The friction-free no-moving-parts vehicles wifi run on what we call “binary power.” Binary power is the concept where two otherwise harmless beams of energy will intersect at some point in space creating a source of power.

To better explain binary power, think in terms of two invisible beams intersecting in a room and the point at which they intersect is a glowing point of light. Yes, binary power eventually will replace all light bulbs. And lest you think it can only be used for intense forms of power, it also will be used to create “points” of sound, eliminating the need for speakers and headphones.

With power being beamed in, the cost, weight and manufacturing complexity of these vehicles will be greatly reduced. For this reason the industry will go through a very rapid conversion, leaving the mechanical masterpieces we know as cars today destined for the scrap heap.

The future of transportation will be derived by strong desires for personal freedom and people’s need to gain control over lifestyles that are moving faster and faster.

At the DaVinci Institute, our goal in writing 2050 and the Future of Transportation was to help stimulate thinking and hopefully make it controversial enough to cause these topics to be debated. While we did manage to turn our crystal ball on high beam for this exercise, there are many optional paths that we potentially could go down to cause a different outcome.

Please take some time to challenge our assumptions, and let us know what you think.