Flying bike: Russia's 'Scorpion' platform soars to third generation
TECH & SCI
By Gong Zhe

2017-02-19 22:05:30

Why pedal a bicycle when you can fly it?
Russian company Hoversurf is redefining current concepts of commuting by speeding up the design of its hoverbikes, which, as their name indicates, are bicycles that can hover.
Hoverbikes look like a cross-breed between a quadcopter and a bicycle, and are believed to be the future of personal transportation vehicles.
The firm’s recent release is a hoverbike powered by electricity stored in a hybrid battery. One need to simply plug-in to charge, and plug-off to hit the road, or more exactly, sky.
A single charging session would allow the user to fly for half an hour at a speed up to 50 kilometers per hour – slower than that a motorbike, but hey, it’s up in the air!
The hoverbike is built on the company's Scorpion-3 platform – for those who have a hard time understanding the jargon, Scorpion is a single-seat aircraft and the number three refers to the generation of the platform.
The Ehang 184 AAV makes its debut in Las Vegas, the US in 2016. /CFP Photo
Scorpion platforms are opening a new window of opportunities, and albeit being used to make extreme sports a little bit edgier, their potential in serving innovation in the field of transportation is not to be underestimated.
As of July, residents of Dubai will get the chance to be hailing… flying taxis, thanks to the autonomous aerial vehicle (AAV) developed by China's Ehang – a tech-oriented company focusing on drones and now human-size drones.
The AAV is also based on Scorpion-3, but features a maximum speed of 160 kilometers per hour -- although Dubai's Road and Transport Authority thinks 100 km/h is fast enough.

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