Hasta La Ideas

When stuck in traffic jams, every commuter must dream of being able to simply fly over the whole mess and get home. But flying cars are a long way off.

Google co-founder Larry Page isn’t waiting around for personal flying vehicles to be developed. Instead Page founded Kitty Hawk, a Mountain-View-based startup helmed by Stanford researcher Sebastian Thrun. Thrun and his team have developed the Flyer, a personal flying machine that looks a drone hauling a bathtub:

Thrun’s claim at the end of that video, that one can learn to fly the thing in less than an hour, sounds crazy. They put together another video showing two novices learning to fly the beta version:

So who is this for, and what’s the application? For now, the ten-rotor craft is programmed to fly just 3-10 feet above water, and can do 20 minutes at 20 MPH. It’s classified as an Ultralight aircraft, meaning it does not require a pilot’s license and cannot be flown over congested areas. That knocks out any commuting possibilities, and the company states that their plan is “to make fleets of Flyer available to fly in recreational environments around the world.”

However, the company has also prototyped a second type of flying vehicle, the Cora, that is intended to be a commute-beater:

Status: “We are working with the CAA [the Civil Aviation Authority, New Zealand’s version of the Federal Aviation Administration],” the company writes, “on further certification goals to bring an air taxi service to the commercial market.”