The flying car has come, but it still needs to fly over the barriers to enter the reality

　　◎Our reporter Yong Li

　　Recently, the world's first manned two-seater intelligent split-type flying car engineering prototype was released in Chongqing. The prototype was developed by the team of Xiang Changle, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Beijing) Co., Ltd. and Chongqing Municipality jointly released.

This flying car adopts a split configuration of three independent modules of an autonomous vertical take-off and landing aircraft, an intelligent control cockpit and an autopilot chassis. It is a three-dimensional delivery system for manned and loaded goods.

　　Xpeng Motors' flying car test prototype X3 has successfully tested its flight, and Geely's flying car has officially been accepted by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (hereinafter referred to as the Civil Aviation Administration of China). Flying cars have become a hot topic nowadays.

Flying cars have come, but how far is it from really entering our lives?

　　Help solve congestion and environmental pollution

　　"Flying car is a cross-border fusion of aircraft and cars. It is a popular name." Xiang Changle introduced that only when it is aimed at individual customers at the consumer end, it has the meaning of a car in the popular concept.

In the industry, it is more accurately called an electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. For the split flying car designed by Xiang Changle's team, Xiang Changle prefers to call it a "three-dimensional delivery system".

　　Many people will wonder the difference between a flying car and a helicopter.

Compared with helicopters, flying cars can rely on wings to generate lift like ordinary airplanes in level flight, while helicopters rely on rotors for the whole process; flying cars require less space for take-off and landing than helicopters.

　　Flying cars are a new type of transportation for urban three-dimensional transportation and future travel, and are an effective way to solve the problems of traffic congestion and environmental pollution faced by urban development.

Developed countries or regions such as the United States, the European Union, and Japan attach great importance to and actively plan to support the research and development of flying cars or urban aircraft.

In March of this year, the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Science and Technology of my country jointly issued the "Outline of the Medium and Long-term Development Plan for Scientific and Technological Innovation in the Transportation Field (2021-2035)", officially incorporating the research and development of flying cars into the plan.

According to the Civil Aviation Administration of China, my country intends to establish a manned and unmanned air transportation system by 2035.

　　"Flying cars are vehicles for three-dimensional travel in future cities." Xiang Changle introduced, point-to-point daily commuting in super-large cities, emergency rescue material delivery, personnel rescue, high-rise fire fighting and other emergency scenarios; mountains, rivers, cross-sea and other roads Scenes with inconvenient transportation; unmanned logistics dispatching such as smart islands, smart ports, and smart parks; sightseeing and flying experiences are all application scenarios for future flying cars.

　　Xiang Changle said that flying cars have two obvious characteristics at the technical level: one is electrification, and the other is intelligence.

In the future, unmanned intelligent flying cars not only need to have the ability of intelligent perception, identification and planning, but also have the ability of network scheduling. The split reconfigurable solution is suitable for this development trend.

The split scheme can not only realize air and ground scheduling, but also realize optimal road-air segment planning based on traffic big data resources.

　　The future application scenarios released by the Chongqing Innovation Center of Beijing Institute of Technology include shared three-dimensional travel dispatched by big data. When users use related services, they are equivalent to using online car-hailing services. The flight module and land module are parked in some large buildings or berths on both sides of the street. Among them, when the user needs it, the flying car can go to the point through automatic driving, and switch between the flight module and the land module according to the user's needs.

　　It is understood that in the current flying car prototype, the ground chassis module has realized automatic driving in some scenarios, and the flight module can also automatically fly according to the corresponding route planning.

　　There are still many difficulties to overcome

　　"To realize the century-old dream of flying cars into the sky, there are still many technical difficulties to be overcome." Wang Weida, deputy dean of the School of Machinery and Vehicles, Beijing Institute of Technology, said, first of all, in terms of energy and power technology, technology must provide flying cars Safer and long-endurance performance breaks through users' concerns about battery mileage; in terms of intelligent technology, based on automatic driving and autonomous flight, intelligent technology needs to achieve a more harmonious human-machine integration mechanism and break through people's safety ethics. concerns.

　　Wang Weida said that at present, the split flying car has broken through new vehicle configuration and aerodynamic layout, efficient new energy power propulsion, distributed electric drive, intelligent perception and precise positioning, intelligent driving, automatic docking switching, human-computer interaction, and land-air coordination. , intelligent network connection and many other key technologies.

In the next step, the research team will also break through major problems in flight stability enhancement control under strong near-ground disturbances, centimeter-level precise positioning and position control during docking switching, energy management and torque control under strongly variable load conditions, etc.

　　"Flying cars are a typical future industry, which requires the support of infrastructure, regulations, safety, ethics and other comprehensive systems." Xu Bin, a professor at Beijing Institute of Technology and founder of Cool Black Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd., said that the application of flying cars requires Promote the optimization and coordination of the traffic management system, airworthiness standards, and low-altitude airspace management.

　　It is understood that the Civil Aviation Administration of China is already at the forefront of the world in terms of airworthiness certification of electric unmanned aircraft, and has issued airworthiness conditions for different unmanned electric aircraft to promote airworthiness certification; in terms of traffic management system, It is necessary to establish a road-air collaborative three-dimensional traffic management system under the condition of air-ground ubiquitous interconnection, realize the interconnection and interoperability of air and ground data, and form a traffic management system for three-dimensional traffic situation awareness, planning control, demand decomposition and order delivery.

At the same time, it is necessary to carry out a demonstration of flying car road-air coordination.

　　On the day when Beijing Institute of Technology released the flying car, Chongqing Innovation Center of Beijing Institute of Technology, Chongqing Liangjiang Collaborative Innovation Zone Construction Investment Development Co., Ltd., and Chongqing Liangjiang Aerospace Industry Investment Group Co., Ltd. jointly signed the "Flying Vehicle Road-Air Collaborative Demonstration Cooperation Agreement" 》, all units will rely on the Chongqing Liangjiang National Vehicle Networking Pilot Zone and the Chongqing Liangjiang Civil Driving Aviation Experimental Zone to carry out the demonstration operation and application promotion of the integration of flying cars, roads and air under the conditions of smart airspace, smart roads, air and ground interconnection, and realize The high degree of coordination of "vehicle-road-cloud-network-map" will jointly build the country's first future three-dimensional traffic road-air collaboration demonstration zone, boost the transformation of flying car achievements, and serve the development of the future three-dimensional transportation industry.

　　"We expect to provide experiential rides for the public as soon as 2025." Xu Bin said that they will also combine logistics, emergency rescue and other needs to establish a drill support system to promote the application of flying cars in related fields.