Personal flying vehicles project aims to end road congestion

The €4.2m (£3.76m), four-year myCopter project is a response to the increasing and unsustainable congestion on Europe’s roads.

‘Whenever I get stuck in traffic, I think what a stupid thing [it is] to be on the road when the space above me is free — so why not use the third dimension for personal transportation?’ Prof Heinrich Bülthoff, of the Max Plank Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, told The Engineer.

‘The controlled airspace starts at 2,000ft, so there’s quite a bit of unrestricted airspace below that — which, of course, can only be used by pilots currently, but the idea is to make flying as easy as driving a car and that’s what we’re looking at.’

The project encompasses three separate arms: automation, human-machine interfaces and socio-economic environmental impact. 

While Bülthoff admits that the project has drawn some raised eyebrows, he points out that automation is slowly finding its way into concept cars for increased safety on motorways and at junctions, for example, while the defence industry is currently looking into flying ‘flocks’ of UAV drones in formation.