It’s way easier to make something fly itself than drive itself.
That’s not entirely true…
The thing is, for something to really be a “flying car” you need to be able to park it at home. That means you need to be able to fly it around a whole lot of hazards, buildings, trees, telephone poles, unpredictable children. Yes, a modern autopilot can take off, fly a route and land all by itself, but the airfields they’re taking off and landing at have none of those hazards I just mentioned as well as air traffic controllers in the tower watching out for problems.
That said, I do think autonomous control is absolutely the way to get there. Just don’t assume it’ll be easy. We should still master self-driving on land first before we start applying it to personal aircraft.
That’s not entirely true…
The thing is, for something to really be a “flying car” you need to be able to park it at home. That means you need to be able to fly it around a whole lot of hazards, buildings, trees, telephone poles, unpredictable children. Yes, a modern autopilot can take off, fly a route and land all by itself, but the airfields they’re taking off and landing at have none of those hazards I just mentioned as well as air traffic controllers in the tower watching out for problems.
That said, I do think autonomous control is absolutely the way to get there. Just don’t assume it’ll be easy. We should still master self-driving on land first before we start applying it to personal aircraft.