MIT student Carl Dietrich has won the 2006 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for new Personal Air Vehicle design:
Dietrich’s most recent invention is a Personal Air Vehicle concept he calls Transition. It is a flying car that relies on the nation’s thousands of underutilized public-access airports to provide a practical transportation alternative to travelers whose trips range between 100 and 500 miles.“If you were taking a trip between 100 and 500 miles right now, chances are you’d probably drive unless you were going between two airport hubs,” Dietrich said. “Driving is fine, but it can take you half a day to reach your destination, and you are subject to unpredictable traffic. Commercial airlines are effective for trips over 500 miles, but…they don’t really attack the short-hop market very well. Personal Air Vehicles open up a lot of possibilities in freedom to get around. They offer convenience and flexibility to fit the traveler’s schedule.”
Dietrich’s Transition can be driven on any surface road and requires only a sport pilot’s license to fly. The SUV-sized vehicle can be stored in most home garages and has folding wings that enable it to operate both on the ground and in the air. It can carry two people with their bags up to 500 miles on a single tank of premium unleaded gasoline.
The Transition also offers modern safety features including an electronic center of gravity calculator (important for weight distribution in flying mode), GPS navigation unit, front and rear crumple zones, airbags, and patent-pending deformable aerodynamic bumpers. Since the driver’s visibility is impaired when the wings are folded up, a tiny camera system embedded in the vertical tails provides direct views of blind spots.
He also designed a desktop-sized fusion reactor and a low-cost rocket engine.