As the field of players in "urban air mobility" (read: flying cars) get more crowded every day, the Larry Page-backed effort Kitty Hawk is trying a different approach with its latest vehicle: it's very quiet. Dubbed Project Heaviside,
it's all-electric, flies like a plane but is capable of vertical
take-off and landing (VTOL) like a helicopter, while being as much as
100 times quieter than a helicopter.
It's also tiny, as you can make out in a picture with a person crouching next to the aircraft with seating for one. TechCrunch got up close and personal with Heaviside, noting that at the moment the cockpit seats its passenger on bare carbon fiber.
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| © Provided by Oath Inc. Heaviside |
Kitty Hawk CEO Sebastian Thrun told TechCrunch "The calculus
here is that this has to be socially acceptable for people," while
demonstrating Heaviside's capability to fly overhead without being any
louder than an office air conditioner. It's also intended to support
both manual and autonomous flight, although regulatory approval could be
quite a way off.
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