A new hover vehicle
resurrected from abandoned 1960′s design plans has sparked a rash of
comparisons to the hover bikes famously seen zipping through the forest
in Star Wars film Return of the Jedi (see below for picture). The original design was abandoned nearly half a century ago due to
stability issues and problems with rollover which could not be fixed at
the time. But California based tech firm Aerofex have now fixed these
problems with an innovative new control system.
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| A Hover Bike from Return of the Jedi |
The new system uses knee level control bars which respond to the
pilots leaning movements and harness the pilots own innate sense of
balance to maintain stability. Because of the fact that this system
responds to natural movements by the pilot / rider (I prefer rider, they
say pilot) it is highly intuitive to fly, leading its makers to
speculate that in the future vehicles like this could easily be flown by
riders without the need for training.
“Think of it as lowering the threshold of flight, down to the domain of ATV’s (all-terrain vehicles),” says Mark De Rocheone of the founders of Aerofex.
Unfortunately for anyone out there like me who really, really wants
one of these right now, the firm has no plans to make a production
version of the vehicle for general sale anytime in the near future.
Instead they plan to use this prototype as a test platform to develop
new unmanned drones. Shame on you Aerofex, for depriving the public of
the joy that I’m sure these things could bring to so many.
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