Gadgetory

hey everybody this is Sean from the virgin we are backstage at the rehearsal for Intel's big CES 2018 keynote and as you can see I'm standing in front of a gigantic flying car this is the valla copter it's an 18 rotor electric helicopter that will hopefully someday become an autonomous vehicle something that you could just hop in and take to wherever you need to go right now it's still in the testing phase and the reason it's here at CES this year is that Intel Singh working with Bala copter to integrate all the technology that it has from its drone division into this to basically get this in the air a lot faster I've never actually been in a helicopter before and this seems like it would be more terrifying than a helicopter although when we watched it fly on stage it was very calm it was very quiet and the video that they showed of an Intel CEO Brian krzanich flying it in Bala copters headquarters he seemed to enjoy it and it seems to be a relatively controlled flight to begin with so I don't know maybe it would actually be pretty fun let's back up a second we've actually seen a lot of volatile assed few years the company hasn't been shy about sharing videos of its radical vehicle while they were testing it it recently got a huge funding round from Daimler and the company even struck a deal to bring the air taxis to Dubai but the vallah copter has never flown stateside this is our first good look at the company and its air taxi in North America and they didn't just bring the prototype that flew on the stage at the Intel keynote they also brought the production version which is what could actually shuttle passengers someday soon okay so now we're here with CEO of ala copter Florian Reuter and what are we standing in front of this is different from what you're throwing off on stage of Intel right yes so this is the volocopter 2x it's our latest model the doors is the most obvious you know change to the overall structure that we've made we've set the entire rotor level a bit higher that's you know to have more passive safety we now have more room inside the fuselage and which we have much more room for the battery compartment and where you have her performance and endurance right now so with the 2x we will reach 30 minutes of flight which still isn't where people want it to be eventually but it is what we can live with you know based on their current limitations of battery technology what is the target for out there just start those kinds of programs so the volocopter really is designed to be used as an air taxi inside urban centers so we're not targeting that say you know large longer distances we want to cover an urban center as good as possible as efficient as possible so I believe that with an endurance of about an hour we should be safe to do every relevant route in most of the other mega cities that we want to apply this technology I've been told by some of the people at Intel that one of the benefits of working with electric motors and building this around electric technology as opposed to a helicopter which has many more moving parts and is far more complex is that something like this should be actually very easy to fly even if somebody doesn't have experience in a helicopter or something that requires a pilot's license does that mean I could really hop in this thing and actually fly it without any experience like that absolutely it is so intuitive to fly you can put a five-year-old in there without any explanation it'll know how to maneuver this vehicle it is so simple so why don't you show me what you've got here is the attraction version so welcome inside what you see now is you have a lot of space very comfortable to sit in this is the autonomous version so you don't have a joystick here and there in the regular piloted version you would have the joystick here that you can then command the directions in this is where you would usually find the emergency handle for the full of aircraft parachute right so again from a psychological perspective they explain how a parachute works on a thing with 18 rotors so actually it is that's the neat thing about the design of the volocopter we don't have a rotor covering the the center piece so if the the parachute shoots out it of course is wired you know you know in a way throughout the entire fuselage so it will hold the entire fuselage the cabins near with the passenger inside and actually it's the it's a ballistic rocket that's being shot out in order to inflate the parachute as fast as possible and then it will you know descend the entire vehicle in a safe manner vallah copters far from the only company working on air taxis or flying cars or whatever you want to call them this might seem like a crazy technology but there are huge companies like uber and Airbus and plenty of startups that are soaking up money to try and make all this happen the whole idea with this partnership that Intel announced this week is that first off it's already been going they've been doing all this work from fire copter to integrate their flight control software as their motor controllers stuff that they've gotten real their expertise they've cut their teeth on with all the drone stuff that we've seen here this week and they've integrated all that into this and helped viola copter really just sort of move the schedule up on this fantastic idea it doesn't mean that we're gonna have flying cars and flying taxis tomorrow or next week or in the next five years but vallah copters gonna get there a lot faster with help from a company like Intel and on Intel side they get to work with a company that's doing flying cars I mean like that's a cool thing to have in your roster of companies that you work with when you're a company like Intel and you're constantly competing with other companies that are also doing cool stuff like autonomous cars and graphics chips and all this stuff so I think this is the perfect example of what Intel's trying to show off at CES this year which is a our stuff is really powerful but look at the cool stuff that it can power tell you what it's tight but this is kind of cool