The first true flying car: DARPA's Transformer TX
request. According to the agency:
Technical areas that will be explored include: hybrid electric drive ducted fan propulsion system, ring motors, energy storage methods such as batteries and ultra capacitors, morphing vehicle bodies, and advanced flight controls and flight management systems.
These features will be applied to produce 1-4 person TX vehicles which can fly for up to two hours “on one tank of fuel,” travel on roads, and be operated “by a typical soldier” — for example, by someone without training as a pilot.
Page writes that these requirements would indicate some kind of conventional liquid-fueled engine as the prime mover, supplying power to an electrical transmission driving ducted fan thrusters. These thrusters would be easily swiveled to provide vertical lift capability or drive the TX forward through the air — perhaps using battery or ultracapacitor power to boost that of the engine for hovering or bursts of speed. This type of a propulsion system could be very quiet compared to normal jets, rotors, and propellers, and it may also offer a fall back emergency landing option in the event of a main-engine failure.
Page writes that his “wild guess” is that “morphing vehicle body” may mean extendable wings or some other means of generating lift from forward motion in flight, allowing the TX to cruise from place to place economically using less thrust while charging up batteries or ultracapacitors drained by a vertical liftoff. “Ring motors” would see the ducted fans driven by machinery located around the outside of the blades, built into the duct walls rather than at their hubs. We can read DARPA’s reference to “advanced flight controls and flight management systems” to mean a sophisticated system which would allow the TX to fly unmanned if required.
DARPA says that “[One-person] TX vehicles could be dispatched for downed airman recovery or for evacuating injured personnel from difficult to access locations.” This makes sense to Page: an autopilot system so good that an ordinary soldier could fly the TX would be effectively capable of unmanned operations anyway. Heavily automated controls and flight-management would also help to counteract the inevitable human errors among drivers/pilots which make the roads so dangerous today and which could make skies full of flying cars undesirable tomorrow.
DARPA also make it clear that the TX would be suitable for operations in built-up areas:
The TX vehicle is intended to make roads irrelevant for military small unit maneuvers. These units can use TX air vehicles to fly over obstacles or impassible terrain, avoid ambushes and improvised explosive devices … or to resupply isolated small units. Four-man versions would be suitable for enhanced company operations concepts which would allow the soldier/team to see the situation and pick the best place to “drop in” for urban operations.
Taken together, DARPA’s list of requirements, if met, make for a true flying car: it is quiet, it hovers, it is so automated that untrained nonspecialists can use it without undue danger to themselves or others.
DARPA correctly points out that such flying cars would have revolutionary effects on small-unit tactics. As has been the case with another DARPA invention — the Internet — “you can see the civilian applications reaching further and faster here than the military ones,” Page concludes.
