A Personal Electric Airplane That Won't Need A Runway

More than half of all personal aircraft accidents occur during takeoffs or landings. That’s why inventor and entrepreneur JoeBen Bevirt—known for designing airplane-like wind energy turbines—is intent on making runways obsolete. Bevirt, 40, has mobilized his wind energy team to create a personal electric airplane called S2 that takes off vertically, like a helicopter, and flies aerodynamically, like an airplane.

No full-scale prototype exists yet, but Bevirt and his team have built about two dozen 10-pound models to demonstrate their concept works. NASA has taken notice and is now funding the development of a 55-pound unmanned aerial vehicle. Supercomputer simulations of a full-scale, 1,700-pound S2 suggest it could fly two people about 200 miles (New York City to Boston) in an hour on 50 kilowatt-hours of electricity, or roughly equivalent to 1.5 gallons of fuel used by a typical two-seat airplane—which would make the new aircraft about five times more efficient.

S2 wouldn’t have been possible just a decade ago, says Bevirt, who believes new compact and efficient motors, ever-increasing power density in batteries, smarter control systems, and tinier sensors mean his plane will soon be a reality. “There has never been a better time to be an aircraft designer,” he says. 

SAFETY AND EFFICIENCY

A dozen compact electric motors operate three times more efficiently than a typical personal airplane’s combustion engines. Bonus: More motors improve redundancy and lower the risk of accidents.

FLEXIBILITY

Retractable arms reposition the motors to transition between vertical takeoff, forward flight, and landing.

CONTROL

Computers adjust motor speed 4,000 times per second to optimize efficiency, reduce noise, and improve flight control.

Lead Inventor: JoeBen Bevirt

Development Cost To Date: "Several million dollars"

Company: Joby Aviation

Charge Gadgets With Your Footsteps

Each thud of a hiker’s heel releases enough energy to illuminate a light bulb. Rather than waste that power, Matt Stanton, an engineer and avid backpacker, created a shoe insole that stores it as electricity. The device promises to be an improvement over traditional, hefty power packs as well as solar chargers, which work slowly or not at all, depending on the weather.

Stanton worked closely with Hahna Alexander, a fellow Carnegie Mellon University engineering student, over three years to create the SolePower system. Instead of using piezoelectric and other inefficient, bulky methods of generating electricity, the pair shrunk down components similar to those found in hand-cranked flashlights. The result is a near standard–size removable insole that weighs less than five ounces, including a battery pack, and charges electronics via USB.

SolePower’s current version, to be released later this year, requires a lengthy 15-mile walk to charge a smartphone. But Stanton says the company is working toward a design that can charge an iPhone after less than five miles of hiking and withstand about 100 million footsteps of wear and tear. 

How It Works:

1) A drivetrain converts the energy of heel strikes into rotational energy, spinning magnetic rotors.

2) The motion of the rotors induces an electrical current within coils of wire.

3) Electricity travels along a wire and into a lithium-ion polymer battery pack on a wearer’s shoelaces.

Lead inventors: Hahna Alexander, Matt Stanton

Development cost to date: $300,000

Company: Sole Power LLC

360-Degree Infrared Vision

Michael Dortch was building video surveillance trailers for industrial parks in Colorado when his clients started asking for near-omniscient views of their properties. They wanted to see intruders in the dark from all angles, but such coverage required up to seven thermal infrared cameras and cost more than $100,000. So Dortch and a colleague spent four years developing a cheaper, more capable alternative. Their Thermal Radar system provides 360-degree infrared coverage that can spot people, fires, vehicles, and more.

The heart of the invention is a single, spinning thermal sensor. Onboard processors constantly stitch images together for a refreshing panoramic video feed, and intelligent software finds threats.

A finished unit will cost about $16,000—many times cheaper than any system that comes close—and should be ready for its debut later this year. The first and biggest market will be corporate security. But the forest service, the Utah Department of Transportation, and even the Pentagon, Dortch says, also have his invention on their radar. 

How It Works:

Warm objects—people, car engines, tires, etc.—emit infrared light.

A spinning camera takes up to 16 thermal images per second, eliminating the need for multiple, expensive cameras.

Software stitches the images together and heat signatures are triangulated with GPS to show their location as a blip on a radar-like applet.

Lead inventors: Michael Dortch, Larry Price

Development cost to date: $3.7 Million

Company: Thermal Imaging Radar LLC