🤔 Robotic Insects are coming for the flying cars

Happy Wednesday!

“The result is that an individual outlier can exert a strong influence over the entire model and, by itself, dramatically change the results.” ― Jim Frost

In other words, be the change you want to see in this world…funny right. 😂

In today’s newsletter:

• They’re making AI insects — I’m not sure if I should be creeped out or not.

• Startups — How are the Electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) start ups doing?

• Fun threads

• Learn

Penses

They’re building Robotic flies and idk if I should be creeped out or not

I don’t think the future of flight is going to be planes. If you grew up with the Jetsons, like me, you’re waiting for a car like flying vehicle to take you places. For that, we need to understand different types of motion.

At CalTech, some scientists have been working on ways to understand how insects fly. We’ve not been able to understand how until now. Insects do not fly like birds or I might like them more.

They are also really, really small. So, these scientist decided to set up high resolution cameras to capture the insects on film. Their Insectywood debut. 😂

Now, I don’t understand all the biological science nuisance but they trained 85% of the footage with a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). They were trying to measure the transformation between muscle activity and wing motion.

Then they did the unthinkable, some lunatic on the team thought it was a good idea to create a robotic fly. Like who needs more disturbing creatures in the world??? A scientific feat or a nightmare come to life. (I’m not sure if I’m kidding or not. )

Anyway, they used this robotic fly to test the aerodynamic force generated by the fly. Then compared it to real flies.

Read the article summary on Ars Technica here. I’m working up the courage to read the full research paper here

Startups

There are a few startups working in the flying car space ( eVTOL).

🤖 Lift Aircraft launched a single person Electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) that doesn’t require a pilots license. It has a ton of propellers and no cargo space. See a video on Good Morning America.

🤖Doroni H1-X has a much better stylist. It looks more like what sci-fi fans expect to see. And they at least considered having a passenger seat. Find out more here

🤖Lilium is as stylish as Doroni with more helicopter meets jet vibes. It fits multiple passengers but it’s not designed a personal vehicle. Read more here

🤖Alef Aeronautics has an actual flying car design and a special license from the FAA to test their car. But no one has seen it fly yet. I’m suspending my belief for the time being. 🤔

Since the airplane wasn’t invented by people with large budgets, I’m not sure if I’ll get my flying car from one either. Seems like most were riffing off the plane instead of building completely different technology. Go talk to the insect people.

The hard part about flying cars is how do we achieve flight in a different way and maybe even with an alternative power source? Though, these startups are monetizing. We’re a long way from the Jetsons. Well, maybe not Alef.

These are the major blockers to flying cars:

• Infrastructure: Where do we put them? How do we fuel them?

• Cost: It’s very expensive to start one of these startups. I’d rather have flying cars than my copyright violated by OpenAI. But that’s just me. So we either need more money or some engineering genius to rethink flight.