B2 – Upper Intermediate
The future is now. That is, if we go by the timeline set by the iconic sci-fi movie “Back to the Future.” So where are all the flying cars? According to Professor Missy Cummings in this BBC feature, there are only a few hurdles to the development of personal air vehicles. And technology is not one of them.
Watch the video then read the article and be ready to express your thoughts about the topic.
The idea of having a part car, part plane, part drone parked outside your home may not be as far-fetched as it seems. There really aren’t any technological hurdles to this.
WWe are going to have personal air vehicles that are both cars and planes, at least that’s Missy Cummings’s vision of the future. It’s basically the intersection of a drone with a robotic car, so that your plane is also your car, but the big leap in technology is that you are actually driving neither, says the Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Drones have a negative bias in the media, says Cummings, because they are essentially seen as spy cameras. But most people don’t realise that when they are on a plane they are effectively travelling on a drone. The fly-by-wire technology that exists on all Airbus and many Boeing craft is the exact same technology that exists on drones.
The reason why drones are the answer to the future is that the truth is we are terrible drivers. Humans inherently have a half-second lag in almost any quick response that they need to have, like a ball rolling out in a street or seeing an aircraft in the sky and you have to take evasive action. Even a half-second delay can mean the difference between life and death, and computers and automated systems don’t have that – they have microseconds.
So, our transportation network of the future, both on the ground and in the air, will actually be safer when we turn it over to computers.
There really aren’t any technological hurdles to this idea, says Cummings. The biggest hurdles we have are psychological and cultural, in terms of giving up the car. But no new tech needs to be developed to have your own personal flying car. What we have to do is improve production and reduce manufacturing costs, and what that means is that we need more robots. So this is almost a self-circular process, where we need robots to build robots to make them cheaper.
Should we worry about the machines rising up and taking over? No, what Cummings says she is worried about is hackers and terrorists who want to do wrong. One of the things she is working on is trying to develop technology that allows any flying robot to be able to fend off any attack and be able to navigate itself without any GPS or any other external signal.
There are lots of different possibilities for what your personal air vehicle could look like. You could own your own in your driveway or garage, and you could jump in it. Or we could have a shared network like the plane version of Zipcar. People should be excited about this: it promises much in terms of safer travel, and in parts of the world where the road and air networks are poor, people will be able to get the goods and services they need.
So, when we look at globalising this concept of personal air vehicles, it means we will see the quality of life improve dramatically for everyone around the world
Discussion Questions:
1. Would owning a personal air vehicle simplify or complicate our lives?
2. What are the hurdles that prevent the full realization of the flying car?
3. If personal air vehicles will essentially be robots, what can be done to ensure that they will be hacker-proof?
8 replies on “A Personal Air Vehicle”
Would owning a personal air vehicle simplify or complicate our lives?
Owning a personal air vehicle would complicate our lives because, in order to own one, you need to get a pilot’s license and stay up-to-date on the latest airspace regulations. Instead of owning an air vehicle, AI-powered air taxis would really change the way people move.
What are the hurdles that prevent the full realization of the flying car?
In my opinion, the hurdles that prevent the full realization of the flying car or drone are the need for a totally different infrastructure for the management of hundreds of air vehicles in the same airspace and the existence of a good enough AI that could transport people from point A to point B with total safety.
If personal air vehicles will essentially be robots, what can be done to ensure that they will be hacker-proof?
Well, first of all, everything that is connected to the internet can be hacked remotely. There are a few things that you can do to prevent hacking. The first of them is the punishment of the offenders; we need to change our laws in order to deter people from doing it.
The second one is maintaining our vehicles up-to-date with security updates, and the last one is supervision by humans to ensure that everything is working as expected.
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1. Would owning a personal air vehicle simplify or complicate our lives?
Owning a personal air vehicle could both simplify and complicate our lives, depending on various factors. On one hand, personal air vehicles could significantly reduce travel time, especially in congested urban areas. It could also be particularly beneficial for commuting, emergency services, and even leisure travel. On the other hand, they also bring a range of challenges that would need to be addressed to ensure they are safe, affordable, and environmentally sustainable.
2. What are the hurdles that prevent the full realization of the flying car?
According to the article there aren’t any technological hurdles to this idea. The biggest hurdles we have are psychological and cultural, in terms of giving up the car.
3. If personal air vehicles will essentially be robots, what can be done to ensure that they will be hacker-proof?
Ensuring that personal air vehicles are hacker-proof is crucial for their safe and reliable operation. Some strategies that can be implemented: Cybersecurity Measures; Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS); Redundancy and Fail-Safe Mechanisms
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1. Would owning a personal air vehicle simplify or complicate our lives?
I think it would depend a lot on the situation of the society, if they have created rules and laws that regularize and simplify the circulation with air cars.
What are the hurdles that prevent the full realization of the flying car?
From what is said in the documentary it seems that the main hurdles is the psychological barrier to give control to technology.
3. If personal air vehicles will essentially be robots, what can be done to ensure that they will be hacker-proof?
It seems that robots will be able to withstand cyber-attacks and not be so easy to hack.
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1. Would owning a personal air vehicle simplify or complicate our lives?
I think it would complicate everything. We would need new regulations, trainings, laws, infraestructure, etc etc. It would mean opening a new world of transportation.
2. What are the hurdles that prevent the full realization of the flying car?
Safety issues mainly, and governments getting on board with it.
3. If personal air vehicles will essentially be robots, what can be done to ensure that they will be hacker-proof?
Make them more manual and human handled, other than that, nothing. Hacking works with AI, it improves almost as much as security does.
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