The Flying Car—Challenges and Strategies Toward Future Adoption

Abstract

In recent years, our surface transportation infrastructure is suffering from overuse, extreme traffic congestion, and roadway disrepair. Instead of following the traditional infrastructure expansion policy, current transportation research focuses on developing innovative and novel solutions to the aforementioned issues. Current pathways to overcoming these issues include the gradual transition toward a number of emerging transportation technologies, such as, autonomous motor vehicles for human transport, as well as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's) and "drone" technologies for surveillance, and package deliveries. However, as a long-term solution, transportation scientists are also investigating the once-seemingly futuristic notion of flying car technology-a convergent form of ground/air vehicle transportation, and assessing associated regulations. In this paper, an extensive review of current literature is conducted to explore the technological capabilities of flying cars-each requiring appropriate regulations and governance-to become fully sustainable. Specifically, issues pertinent to training, safety, environment, navigation, infrastructure, logistics/sustainability, and cybersecurity and human factors are explored. This paper concludes with a preliminary quantitative analysis exploring the public perceptions associated with flying cars-including anticipated benefits, concerns, and willingness to both hire and acquire the technology once available to consumers. Insights offered by this data will help inform next-generation policies and standards associated with the gradual advancement of flying cars.

Vehicle Connectivity and Automation: A Sibling Relationship

“…More broadly, connectivity and automation may create or foster synergies beyond road transportation to surface and air transportation, such as Urban Air Mobility (UAM) systems. While air mobility technology is still in a nascent stage of development, recent studies suggest that the UAM concept is replete with opportunities, including the harnessing connectivity and automation, that could profoundly impact the transportation systems of tomorrow (Ahmed et al, 2020a;Eker et al, 2020;Straubinger et al, 2020). Finally, it must be mentioned that, while vehicle connectivity can potentially enhance and help prepare traditional transportation systems for the inevitable era of autonomous vehicles, such benefits may be realized only when appropriate legislative initiatives and policies are established to address public concerns and perceptions regarding such emerging technologies (Kim et al, 2019;Ahmed et al, 2020b).…”

Survey data on public perceptions towards flying cars and flying taxi services

“…A summary of the questions and the used scales are presented in Table 1 . Original research based on this dataset include: [5] , [6] , [7] , [8] , [9] , [10] .…”

Optimal Control of Several Motion Models

“…, a n ) for all t ∈ [0, T ]. Note that equation (2) shows us a relationship between the actual velocity ẋ(t) and the controlled desired velocity…”