Transcript

Flight to the Future | TEDxWakeForestU 2021 | Sam Bousfield | TEDxWakeForestU

URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxQ8iv8GMKM
Video ID: RxQ8iv8GMKM
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artists dream the future and the future they dream about has flying cars this isn't just an american dream for example leonardo da vinci who was quite taken with flying designs back in the 15th century came up with one approach which by today's standards might look simplistic but you have to realize that this was in the early days of horse and buggy and bows and arrows the amazing thing is that he was able to look into the future and see that we would fly he wasn't the only person of ages past to dream this future one can trace back to ancient egypt and see flying chariots depicted no this particular dream appears to span the ages now more recently most of the movies about the future star wars star trek fifth element show the major transportation happening in the skies and very little on the ground perhaps the most famous show featuring flying flying cars was a 1950s cartoon comedy of a family in the future called the jetsons it is amazing to me to realize that all of that advanced technology dreamed up for the show has actually been produced and we take it for granted today escalators cell phones talking computers and of course a flying car all were invented and put into production except the flying car that's next but the takeaway is that the future society of the jetsons traveled by air this only makes sense as there's much more space for traffic above the ground than on the ground in the sky layers upon layers of traffic are possible with no stop signs no traffic lights and no construction to slow you down and you can travel into straight lines which is the shortest distance between any two points right so if the future of transportation is in the air how do we get from where we are now mostly ground traffic to the future where most of the traffic is in the air that's the first question i asked before i decided to develop a flying car now everything has a starting point a middle and an end this could be said of almost anything in this universe including stories a building or life itself in the case of flying cars there are vehicles that could be used at the start of this great change in transportation there are vehicles that are likely to be useful in the middle of this changeover to airborne travel and there are vehicles that will definitely be huge up to the end of the need for transportation of this kind i believe we'll start with something that would both drive and fly like our vehicle the switchblade something that could use our existing infrastructure of roads and airports something that you could do now this seems to be a reasonable first step or a starting point now a lot of you have undoubtedly seen the articles and news about vertical takeoff and landing or veto air taxis the different varieties of vetos could form the middle phase of this transition which would stretch out over time as there are decades needed to establish the infrastructure required to allow that form of transportation to become useful you can see why as with the veto you have to land where you want to go and currently there's no places to land safely at grocery stores hotels the dentist's office or even any neighborhoods i see that the driving and flying cars will continue throughout much of this middle step of the veto until there are enough landing places to tip the scale in the veto direction at which point it's likely that the large majority of vehicles would then be of the veto type now there's another category of vehicles that will take over once someone invents anti-gravity technology i know what you're thinking but remember artists dream the future and this is what they see at that point whenever that happens we can remove the propellers and noise from the equation then it's game over who would not want to be whizzing around in their own space age hover car right that would be the foreseeable end game and high point of the conversion of transportation into the skies well what is this future transportation system going to look like if you're going to predict future transportation how would it operate for one it would have to be as easy or easier than driving a car one would likely step inside the vehicle punch in a destination and say engage or something like that if you're a star trek fan the computer would take you on the quickest and safest route to your destination does this mean the end of being able to drive or pilot your own vehicle i definitely hope not i love to drive and flying my own aircraft is a dream in itself what it does mean is that air traffic control atc will need an upgrade to handle this new traffic right now human at atc staff manage the thousands of flights daily across the us and that system works well if we begin to take advantage of this new form of transportation and the air traffic volume goes ballistic in numbers then we will probably need to project highways in the sky little boxes that you would help fly through as to keep you safe and assigned by computers who monitor traffic volumes and destinations being requested this can handle roughly 90 percent of routine traffic leaving human controllers to handle the remaining 10 percent as exceptions there always be that time when you forget to turn off the stove or you left your phone behind or some other catastrophic event right and a human would likely guide you out of the planned route and onto a return route in order to handle changes of plans so bringing it back to the present the short to middle game in this newly created future will be handled by flying cars something that drives and flies now who could benefit from this well let's look at some stats for the u.s there are over two and a half million mega commuters driving two hours each way to work and yes many of these are not commuting right now due to the pandemic but that too shall pass there are also 18 million regional leisure and business travelers each year driving 10 hours each way on their average trip they could save 65 percent of their travel time using a flying car for the business world that adds up to 90 billion dollars just in the cost of hourly wages lost in travel so it isn't hard to imagine why the business world could benefit how about you what would your life be like if you could travel 500 miles in two and a half hours think of the places you could get to the people you could see what would this mean to your lifestyle think about this tonight and come up with your own conclusions now what would have to happen before flying cars become commonplace probably they would need to be affordable as not many people could afford to pay a half million dollars for a new airplane they would need to be usable and not just a toy for once a month fun they would be practical not easily damaged or overly complicated it would have to be safe safe to drive safe to fly and a parachute for the whole vehicle might not be a bad idea finally they would have to be fun pleasurable things are embraced painful things are usually shunned you don't find many people planning a vacation and thinking how wonderful it would be to spend it being stuck in traffic just to get there arriving exhausted and stressed i can't wait for it and then having to repeat that on the way home wouldn't it be wonderful if the trip somewhere was just as pleasurable as the destination these were the goals we set and met with the switchblade flying sports car so how does the switchblade fit in well you store it in your garage ready to take you on your next adventure it operates using existing infrastructure roads and airports that are already there little known fact most people in the u.s live within 15 minutes of an airport you have to check that out when you get home see where yours are there are five thousand public use airports and most are within six miles of the city that they serve when you compare this to the 500 airports that have scheduled service you can see there are many more places you can get to with a switchblade than you can with commercial flight this is probably why we have reservation holders in 37 countries internationally and in all 50 states in in america want to know the two most frequent questions we get asked the first is how does it transform from driving to flying good question and the second is does it have cup holders the answer is yes we have cup holders and let's show you how this transforms once out of the garage and in a safe place to make the change you push a button and the tail moves backwards and starts to unfurl looks a little organic during this process the clamshell doors in the belly of the vehicle open up to allow the wings to swing out when the wings and tail are fully extended the lock and position ready for flight now i'm sure that many of you have heard that a flying car could be either a mediocre plane or a mediocre car or both that is a common misconception on our biggest roadblock to acceptance as the switchblade was designed to be high performance in both modes it is a blast to drive and it flies up to 200 miles per hour there's nothing mediocre about the switchblade and there's nothing mediocre about the benefits of flying car travel either for one you're never stopped you can fly right over construction or dense traffic if weather ahead looks bad you'd land and drive under the weather say you took off from wake forest area and flew the hour and 15 minutes to charleston on the coast had dinner and walked out to find the fog had rolled in most aircraft would be grounded but you can simply get in and drive out from the fog and then take off and fly the rest of the way home you travel on your own schedule in one vehicle no uber taxi or rental car and your belongings stay with you the whole way in samson's case we are designed to be ready for autonomous driving and flying in case that really becomes a thing this is not easy actually we've spent the last 13 years doing what no one has been able to do so far for instance fly by wire controls fly by wire means that the pilot is directing the flight using a joystick or control wheel but there's no mechanical link to the wings or tail where these commands are carried out it is all done electronically usually this is only found on military or large commercial aircraft we had to develop our own system applicable to something like the switchblade the switchblade also has an electric hybrid drive system it's easy to see the world is going electric and there are a lot of advantages in that our system is tailored specifically for flying cars and has advantages that no other form of transportation can offer again often you drive from one city to another but you have to dodge away from your way out of the way to get there due to the highway system right you're starting here in here you have to go like that flying cars allow you to go directly from one point to the other reducing the time of travel and the fuel used a benefit to your fellow man is that when you take your vehicle off the highways or roads you speed up the travel for others and that can have a large impact on reducing traffic congestion as a whole just three to five percent reduction of peak traffic allows the rest of vehicles to double their speed and there's one particular benefit for the environment that we at sampson have added we have spent four years perfecting methods of construction that allow us to create flying cars using recyclable materials in addition our manufacturing process does not get off toxic fumes and what little waste we have is recycled into secondary products this is very unlike current methods of aircraft construction the switchblade is really a paradigm shift in a lot of different ways now here's a big question how will we train all of these new pilots for the faa there are already six hundred thousand licensed pilots in the us either student pilots or private pilots but for new people wishing to be pilots i'm happy to tell you that in my experience it is actually not that hard to fly flying is the easy part the hardest part is learning the language you have to learn to speak pilot if you talk to governments they will tell you that the official worldwide language of flight is english it isn't it is pilot don't believe me just listen in on your next commercial flight to the radio chatter between pilots and ground control i would be amazed if you could make out half of what they're saying i know i couldn't before i began pilot training it is literally like a new language and this is one of the key reasons that people fail in pilot training they don't approach it as a new language and when their instructor starts talking pilot to them they go blank they don't understand it and they think they might be dumb or something and give up not so you just haven't learned the language yet by the way this is applicable to any field of study so if you're having a hard time with a subject make sure you have learned the language make sure you understand the words being used currently there's a 70 dropout rate for student pilots unacceptable to say the least we're going to change that by offering a pilot training program that breaks down flying into small steps that one can learn in an orderly fashion one part building on the part before it we're also defining terms as we introduce them so that this new language can be easily understood it takes 20 hours or so of ground training and 40 hours of in the air flight training before you can become a private pilot one improvement made through the federal aviation administration the faa is the use of flight simulators with the new breed of flight sims you can actually log the time as flight hours up to a certain amount at samson our sim was created in-house to raise the bar for flight training and provide a very realistic experience you push the button to have the unit open up so you can enter from the side like you would enter into the switchblade then you sit down in an actual switchblade cockpit while the unit closes up around you we have a digital dashboard and instruments on flat screens to simulate the exact setup you would be flying with there are three projectors set up to provide 180 degree visuals and a computer to allow very high graphics quality for the scenery with this we can program in different scenarios for the student to practice over and over until they master it before going on to the next scenario or before doing this maneuver in an actual aircraft with their flight instructor we have a lot of people who are not pilots who want to become switchblade owners and this is how we'll be helping them achieve their goals and helping them become proficient pilots safety features are also abundant in the switchblade front and rear crumple zones side impact protection rollover protection and a whole vehicle parachute we feel the switchblade will be the safest small aircraft in production for these and a host of other reasons now you might be interested in what life is like using a flying car as mentioned you would store it in your garage pack your belongings in the vehicle as you would for a driving trip then you would simply drive it to the closest airport push a button and the wings and tail begin to swing out lock and position you then take off and fly towards the airport closest to your destination the views along the way may astound you the world looks very different from a few thousand feet above the ground commercial jets usually fly at altitudes of twenty to thirty thousand feet so you really can't see much from a flying car you can see many things that others will never catch a glimpse of and is often gorgeous it's just amazing what you can see then you land the flying car push the button again to retract the wings and tail which stow safely inside the vehicle to protect them while driving and drive those last few miles to complete your journey a journey that may be just as enjoyable as the destination i've enjoyed sharing a journey into the future with you and i would like to end by saying that the future is what we create we create it good or bad personally i want a future that includes flying cars i think a lot of you share that vision the freedom to travel on your own terms having your own personal time machine to take the time out of travel so you can explore those special places in life or see family and friends more often or get to that critical business presentation that will make your life and our lives a better place the future is what we create so let's create a bright and vibrant one thank you