Imagine personal flight as intuitive as riding a bike. Or transporting a small fleet of first-responder craft in the belly of a passenger transport. Think of the advantages of patrolling borders without first constructing roads.
In pursuit of this vision, Aerofex is flying a proof-of-concept craft developed as a test-bed of manned and unmanned technologies. -Aerofex Corp.
This is just neat. But what I was thinking about after watching this, is the military application if this technology actually becomes refined and durable. IED’s are designed to explode when you drive over them–or pressure detonated. Or they are remotely detonated or triggered by a physical trip wire in the form of a wire or beam. With a vehicle like this, you could set the hover height to be well above vehicle height, and have nothing touching the ground in order to avoid the pressure plates.
A vehicle like this would be nice for areas that do not have roads, or the roads are hindered and muddied due to weather. The key advantage here is getting the vehicle off of the ground.
The other thing to note is that this vehicle is really more a test platform for the concept of Tandem-Duct propulsion. The company’s paper on what makes it work is sold here. Interesting stuff and check it out. –Matt
