Let’s take a look at some projects researchers and engineers are working on right now.
No stress
After seven years of development, California-based company Opener recently presented its Blackfly electric airplane. The single-seater has already taken to the air successfully on a test flight. The vehicles are intended to “liberate the public from the restrictions of two-dimensional road travel by opening up a new world of unfeathered three-dimensional flight”, the company writes. It describes its flyers as the heralds of a new era of stress-free travel.
No pilot
“Vahana” is a project initiated at an Airbus Group innovation center in Silicon Valley. Its goal is the development of an electric, autonomous vertical-ascent and descent plane to open up urban air traffic routes. According to its developers, Vahana is intended as a “cost-effective substitute for local means of transportation like cars or trains.” Initial test flights were completed successfully in early 2018. The great advantage of this autonomous system: There is no need for trained pilots, which means that the frequency of such flights could be increased enormously.