.: November 2012

Personal Jet Pack

Who needs jet fuel when you have a pair of powerful legs? That's the maxim demonstrated by a long line of engineers and athletic pilots who have pushed the limits of human-powered transportation by land, air, and sea. Pictured here is the Gossamer Albatross, which in 1979 became the first human-powered aircraft to cross the English Channel.

Sponsored by DuPont, inventor Paul MacCready built the lightweight craft from carbon fiber tubing, balsa wood, clear Mylar, and Kevlar, with the addition of some wire and foam. He engineered a series of human- and solar-powered aircraft between 1959 and 1980, and in 1971 he founded AeroVironment-a company today known for its unmanned aircraft systems and charging equipment for electric cars.

The 22.5-mile (36.2 kilometer) Albatross flight lasted just under three hours--about an hour longer than anticipated. And Bryan Allen, the long-distance cyclist who powered the 70-pound Albatross through that grueling journey over water despite leg cramps and dehydration, later told AeroVironment, "There were so many unknowns on that flight that I could not be certain we'd make it, but I was certain I'd use every resource in trying."

--Josie Garthwaite

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visitThe Great Energy Challenge.

Self-Driving Car

Illustration courtesy Mike and Maaike

Take all the autonomy and privacy of personal vehicles, subtract the human propensity for distraction, and add a virtual chauffeur. What do you have? Autonomous cars that, in theory, can help commuters de-stress and allow freeways to flow more smoothly. That's the idea, anyway, behind driverless cars, which are gaining increasing attention from automakers and high-tech companies alike.

Demonstration models that Google, BMW, Volvo, General Motors, Stanford University, and others have built for testing look like modified regular cars (which they usually are -- computing gear can fit in the trunk). But designers have come up with more futuristic concepts, like the one pictured here from San Francisco industrial design shop Mike & Maaike. Dubbed Atnmbl ("autonomobile," derived from autonomy and automobile), the seven-seat design does away with the steering wheel, brake pedal, and driver's seat. It's envisioned as an electric- and solar-powered model for the year 2040.

But autonomous vehicle technology is being tested on some public roadways today, and General Motors executive Alan Taub said recently that vehicles capable of partially driving themselves could become available before the end of this decade.

"You think that driving a car is hard, but it's not actually that hard for a computer . . . if the computer actually has good data about what's around it," Google co-founder Larry Page said in a talk at the search giant's Zeitgeist Americas event this fall. "I think they'll work substantially better than an average person, and get better from there. You'll get a software update and your car will be safer."

Gossamer Albatross

Photograph from Corbis

Shweeb Monorail

Photograph courtesy Shweeb Monorail Technology

In the late 1800s, a short-lived experimental transportation system in southern New Jersey took contraptions that looked like upside-down bicycles and mounted them on 1.8 miles (2.9 kilometers) of rail for a smoother, faster ride than one could expect on bicycles of the day. More recently, the idea of a pedal-powered monorail has been revived and updated at a Rotorua, New Zealand, amusement park by a company named Shweeb.

Google invested $1 million in September 2010 to support further development of the system for an urban environment. Similar to the bicycle railways of centuries past, the Shweeb system is meant to reduce rolling resistance, "by running hard wheels on hard rail," according to the Shweeb website. But the Shweeb concept goes way beyond that. The design also seeks to cut wind resistance by positioning pedaling passengers in bullet-shaped hanging "pods" with their feet forward, as on a recumbent bicycle. The pods hang from 8-inch-wide (20-centimeter-wide) rails constructed 19 feet (5.8 meters) above street-level pedestrians and traffic.

Worried about passing? No need, says the Shweeb team--tailgating can actually help both riders travel faster. That's because a solo pod would have a high-pressure zone, or headwind in front, and a low-pressure zone, or vacuum behind. But when one pod sidles up behind another, it eliminates the vacuum for the lead pod and the headwind for the trailing pod. In short, resistance is cut by half. The company's website promises, "Just as tandem bicycles always travel faster than two single bicycles, two Shweebs travelling in a train always travel faster than either of them could travelling solo." Don't just take it from Shweeb, though. Consider the NASCAR technique known as "two-car bump drafting," in which racers link front and rear bumpers to effectively drive as one car with two engines.

According to Peter Cossey, managing director of Shweeb Holdings, the company is hard at work on the Google-backed R&D project and hopes "to have something out" in late 2012, although with ambition to build an accessible, green, cost-competitive, and fun transit solution, he wrote in an email, there remains "a lot on the to-do list."

Hand-Powered Submarine

Illustration from Mary Evans Picture Library/Alamy

Human-powered vehicles these days might bring to mind recreational contraptions for garage tinkerers or the green-minded set. But rewind back to the American Revolutionary War, and you'll find a human-powered vehicle at the heart of a military attack. Well, an attempted attack, anyway.

Meet the American Turtle: the first combat submarine, designed in 1775 by a Yale College student in his 30s named David Bushnell. The oak and iron vessel measured 7.5 feet (2.3 meters) tall and 6 feet (1.8 meters) wide across its midsection. A solo pilot would crank two propellers and maneuver a rudder by hand. To attack, the operator was meant to drill a screw into a ship's hull and light a time fuse, which would be attached to a charge of gunpowder. Then he would crank like mad to get the heck out of Dodge.

As it turned out, the hull of the British warship selected as the Turtle's first target was plated in copper. That mission, and two later attacks, failed.

Bushnell's Turtle did not have much of a career in future military operations, let alone in civilian life. But roadways today are peppered with technology and designs initially developed for military applications. Chris Gerdes, director of theCenter for Automotive Research at Stanford University, pointed to the Jeep as the most prominent example of military vehicles influencing civilian mobility. "This really went from iconic military transport to iconic expression of freedom and mobility," he wrote in an email.

Even the Volkswagen Beetle has its roots in defense projects. "This chassis was used by the German military and production was restarted by the British army after the war to meet their needs," said Gerdes. "Some of these were exported by soldiers to the UK and the Beetle craze began."

Today, the U.S. military is investing in biofuels, solar, energy conservation, and other green technologies. "Today, one Marine has more technology than I had for 40,000 troops in 2000," Major General Anthony Jackson said during an event at Stanford University last month, just weeks before retiring. "When wars end," he added, "all that technology goes into the civilian sector."

Leonardo da Vinci’s Helicopter

Photograph by Valentina Petrova, AP

A scale model of Leonardo da Vinci's aerial screw, pictured here in an exhibit at the Sofia City Art Gallery in Bulgaria, gives visitors a glimpse of one of the inventors' most famous schemes for a flying machine. Sketched in 1493, the design called for a spiral-shaped, rotating surface made from iron wire and linen made "airtight with starch," and powered by a human passenger, according to the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission report on early helicopter technology.

The screw, also known a the "air gyroscope," is credited as the first rotary-wing aircraft concept, but Leonardo's design would have been a flightless bird. According to the Centennial of Flight Commission, muscle power "would never have been sufficient to operate a helicopter successfully . . . there was no way to deal with the torque created by the propeller."

Lightweight "Dymaxion" Car

Photograph from Hedrich Blessing Collection, Chicago History Museum/Getty Images

A house, a map, a bathroom, and a car: Those are the widely varied applicationsthat inventor Buckminster Fuller found for his Dymaxion (dynamic maximum tension) concept. Shown here is Fuller's first Dymaxion Car, which could carry up to 11 passengers, travel up to 120 miles per hour (about 145 kilometers per hour), and average 28 miles per gallon of gasoline (a little less than 12 kilometers per liter). For comparison, the most efficient minivans in the 2012 model year are rated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at only 24 miles per gallon (just over 10 kilometers per liter).

The three-wheeled Dymaxion Car, pictured here at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, had a steel frame and an ash wood body covered with aluminum. Painted canvas formed the roof. A Dymaxion driver ended up being killed in a crash during a demonstration of the teardrop-shaped vehicle--the apparent result of arubber-necking driver pulling alongside and hitting the vehicle. The incident spooked potential investors, and the design never made it into large-scale production.

Still, shedding pounds has become a vital part of vehicle design in an era of automakers competing to build better, greener cars. "Light weight in vehicle design is extremely important for fuel economy and to make electric vehicles more viable," said Chris Gerdes, director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford University. In an email, he explained, "There is a concept known as 'mass decompounding,' meaning that as you make the car lighter, you can make the motor smaller which in turn allows you to carry fewer batteries, which reduces weight further."

Harry Potter "Knight Bus"

Photograph by Astrid Stawiarz, Getty Images

A stranded young wizard in the world of Harry Potter need only jab a wand in the air to summon the Knight Bus, a triple-decker that offers a topsy-turvy brand of public transportation on demand. Forget taxis. This machine can shrink to squeeze through tight spots, and passengers can buy hot chocolate or a toothbrush on board.

"I love Harry Potter's Knight Bus," said Rachel MacCleery, vice president of infrastructure for the Urban Land Institute. "[It's] so great that it's a bus--the workhorse of any transit system-and not a train," she wrote in an email.

Wands sadly remain the stuff of fiction, but the Knight Bus illustrates concepts at work in real-world transportation systems. Telematics, for example, have helped advance "demand responsive" and community-based flexible transport services to help fill the gap between buses and taxis, especially in rural areas. Routes can be optimized based on real-time demand and passengers can be assigned dynamically based on the location and status of vehicles in the fleet.

In cities around the world, minibuses and share taxis facilitate this kind of trip aggregation in more informal networks. Residents of New York City and other metro areas, meanwhile, have a growing number of apps to use for finding fellow travelers who will share a cab ride--thereby saving on fare and potentially preventing emissions that would otherwise result from two cars carrying solo passengers.

(Related Pictures: "Twelve Car-Free City Zones")

"Even with diesel buses, we're taking cars off the road," Virginia Miller, a spokesperson for the American Public Transportation Association said in a phone interview. But many buses now run on natural gas or use gas-electric hybrid systems. Percentage-wise, she added, "If the auto fleet here had as many hybrids as the transit system does, we'd be in a much better place."

SkySails Towing Kite

Photograph courtesy SkySails

"Let's go fly a kite, up to the highest height," the characters of Mary Poppins sing in Walt Disney's 1964 film. For SkySails, a company headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, high-flying, huge kites are the basis of a business aiming to transform the shipping industry.

Already, SkySails has attracted about 50 million euros ($67.6 million) in investment for its automated towing kite systems, which include onboard launch, recovery, and steering systems, plus a rope, control pod, and towing kite that swoops in figure-eights hundreds of meters in the air in front of the ship to generate propulsion power.

Fewer than 10 ships have been outfitted with the technology to date. Yet using wind propulsion to eliminate even a portion of cargo ships' fossil fuel needs could be an important step for an industry responsible for some 3.3 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions in 2007. And the International Maritime Organization estimates emissions from international shipping, which made up 2.7 percent of global human-caused CO2 emissions in 2007, could double or triple by 2050.

Maglev Train

Photograph by Keren Su, Corbis

The idea of high-speed magnetically levitated trains has floated around since the early 1900s. The concept involves using magnetic fields to levitate a train above the rails, or guideways. No contact between wheels and rails means less friction, and, in theory, lower maintenance costs compared to conventional bullet trains.

The technology has seen real-world operation, notably in German and Japanese demonstration projects, and in 2004 Shanghai launched the first commercial maglev line after two years of trials. Connecting the Shanghai airport to downtown, the Shanghai Maglev Train (pictured here) travels up to a blazing-fast 431 kilometers per hour, or about 268 miles per hour.

But the up-front costs are steep. In 2008, Germany ditched plans for a 40-kilometer (24.9 mile) maglev project in Munich after cost estimates ballooned to more than 3 billion euros, from a previous estimate of 1.85 billion euros. But maglev isn't over and out yet. This spring, Japanese officials gave the go-aheadfor construction of a 9-trillion-yen ($111.4 billion), 320-mile (515-kilometer) maglev line between Tokyo and Osaka, much of it underground. If all goes according to plan-and maglev projects rarely do-the two cities will be connected by a 40-minute train ride by 2045.

Source:http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2011/11/pictures/111123-amazing-transportation-ideas/#/transportation-ideas-jetpack_43937_600x450.jpg