Having a personal land-based vehicle is becoming over-rated these few past years as many people with aeronautic interest now put efforts on air-based machines. Apparently, it is now the era of Personal Air Vehicle, and that comes in the heels of the invention of Hoverbike, which is essentially half helicopter, half motorcycle.
This flying machine has become the hype of people and communities. Many universities, farmers, search and rescue, private companies, even military put their eyes on this machine and the development of their prototypes over the years.
It started off as a personal hobby, where a New Zealand student named Chris Malloy created a Hoverbike project that quickly became a rising enterprise. He originally made the handcrafted Hoverbike with a foam core,carbon fibre, kevlar and aluminium.
His company called Malloy Aeronautics has made a one-third prototype of the machine, along with the full size one as seen in Business Insider's video.
The UK-based company has been making these prototypes which is currently being considered for future use by the United States Army.
The most recent announcement from Malloy stated that the company had teamed up with a Maryland research and development company for the US military, adding that many developing military technologies had high chances to be designed, built, or tested in Maryland.
The companies envision the machine to be possibly used as a transport tool for troops, also acting as a drone or an unmanned vehicle named Marshall Drone, according to PC World.
Part motorcycle and part helicopter, the controls of the Hoverbike won't be that much of an issue. It has a fly-by-wire system, which means that it can be flown without a pilot input.
Although the Hoverbike cannot auto-rotate, it compensates the design to add parachutes, giving the pilot safety precautions with installed explosive parachutes attached to the airframe.
The full-size hoverbike will be powered by a gasoline engine turning an alternator to provide power for its four electric rotors. There will be two versions, with one and two seats. They will fly up to 96 kilometers per hour (60 miles per hour), with a range of up to 240 kilometers (150 miles).
The prototypes are basically similiar to the racers machines that Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia used to in the film "Return of the Jedi". So much of being a Star Wars fiction, other companies and manufacturers like Aerofex had made a like-wise feature of a hoverbike. Moreover, hoverbike is also designed similar with airplane as can be seen in the video from Hooz.
With the latest prototype which can be used as personal transportation; hopefully, hoverbike would be used as private transportation in the future.
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