'Flying Air Taxis: A Solution to the Traffic Problem in Malta?' is the title of the next MaKS Research Seminar that will be held on Friday 4 May at 12:15 in MaKS Room 414, University of Malta Msida Campus.
The speaker is Prof. Dr. Heinrich H. B眉lthoff from Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, T眉bingen, Germany.
Entrance is free, but a place may be reserved by sending an email to info.maks@um.edu.mt.
Abstract
Considering the prevailing congestion problems with ground-based transportation and the anticipated growth of traffic in the coming decades, a major challenge is to find solutions that combine the best of ground-based and air-based transportation. The optimal solution would consist in creating a personal air transport system (PATS) that can overcome the environmental and financial costs associated with all of our current methods of transport.
In the European project (www.myCopter.eu, 2011-2014) we proposed an integrated approach to enable the first viable PATS based on Personal Aerial Vehicles (PAVs) envisioned for travelling between homes and working places, and for flying at low altitude in urban environments. The project was aimed to pave the way for PAVs to be used by the general public within the context of such a transport system.
The myCopter project has not been the only development aiming at making personal aviation a reality. The last five years has seen a surge in research and development activities in this direction around the globe. The
In a follow-up project at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics we looked specifically at the question how we can make flying these vehicles as easy as driving a car. This presentation shows that existing
Furthermore, a novel haptic trainer is described to teach pilots how to stabilize the PAV-helicopter in case of
Speaker's profile
Heinrich B眉lthoff is a scientific member of the Max Planck Society and director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in T眉bingen. He is head of the Department Human Perception, Cognition and Action in which a group of about 50 researchers investigate psychophysical and computational aspects of higher level
Eberhard-Karls-Universit盲t in T眉bingen. From 1980 to 1988 he worked as a research scientist at the Max
Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He was Assistant, Associate and Full Professor of Cognitive Science at Brown University in Providence from 1988-1993 before becoming director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. He is Honorary Professor at the Eberhard-Karls-Universit盲t (T眉bingen) and was Adjunct Professor at Korea University (Seoul) and founding editor of the ACM Transactions on Applied Perception and editor of other international journals. Heinrich B眉lthoff is involved in many international collaborations and member of several European research networks.
He has participated in many projects funded by the European Commission and was head of the EU myCopter project on Enabling Technologies for Personal Aerial Transportation Systems.
