There seems to be a revolution going on in transportation and aviation - autonomous cars and delivery vehicles, drones in all different shapes and sizes, and of course, the infamous hoverboard or 'self-balancing scooter'.
Now, there's an addition to this family of new inventions - a cross between a drone and a motorbike.
It looks like something that's straight out of a star wars movie, but this prototype actually has a lotg of potential!
The Scorpion 3 is world's first fully-manned quadcopter, often nicknamed the "Hoverbike".
Yes, it's essentially a flying Motorbike!
It has one seat and can be controlled by a Human as a motorbike, or remote-controlled as a drone.
It can carry 120kg, and stay in the air for up to 27 minutes with a maximum speed of 48 km/h.
The quadcopter could rise up to 350m, but for safety reason it's restricted to 10m when a human is "riding" it.
Last week, the Scorpion 3 was introduced with a video where you can see the team testing it in a warehouse:
The "Pilot" is not only wearing a helmet, but body armor as well - indicating that a fall could still be possible at this stage of the development.
As you can see though, the vehicle itself is pretty advanced, the quadcopters seem to be very powerful and steady and moved according to the pilot's controls.
When controlled by a human, there's a custom, built-in safety system which restricts the vehicle to fly too fast or too high.
The new vehicle has been created by Hoversurf, a drone-building startup.
They combined high-tech drone equipment with a motorcycle seat and -shape to turn the hybrid into a vehicle.
Hoversurf stated that their aim was to create an "extreme sports instrument".
But extreme sports on this could be quite dangerous (and quite far in the future), and also just (personal) transportation might be useful/exciting enough as well.
Founder Alex Atamanov stated that this Hoverbike was his "lifelong dream".
He was inspired in aviation technologies by his father, who had devoted his life to engineering and air travel.
While there have been other prototypes for a Hoverbike, amongst others one from Malloy Aeronautics in collaboration with the US Army, this one is the most promising and most developed one.
Obviously it's still years away from a mass production, but it's a very interesting concept that has a lot of potential for the future.
Images: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
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