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Welcome to What the Future.
On this week show, a flying motorcycle that actually flies.
And NASA is getting to explore Mars from a whole new perspective.
And why the newest robot from Boston Dynamics could also be its biggest game changer.
Yeah, let's get right to it.
If you tuned in a few weeks ago, you may remember the speeder concept from jetpack aviation.
It's available for pre order, but we haven't seen a working prototype.
So maybe it's not a coincidence that French company Lazareth, is now showing us its flying motorcycle in action.
The company calls it La Moto Volante, and this is the first time we've seen it achieve a stable hover.
Now this isn't a hover bike, this is a motorcycle you can ride on the ground That also flies.
Lazarus says it's put a 96,000 RPM jet cat turbine in the hub of each wheel.
Flip a switch and hydraulic actuators tilt the wheels up And out.
it takes about a minute for the jets to preheat.
Now according to BMF TV, the bike weighs just over 300 pounds and generates about 530 pounds of thrust while in flight mode.
Now this appears to be a modified version of Lazarus LMA 47.
That's a four wheeler powered by a 470 horsepower Maserati engine.
Lazareth says it plans to publicly debut the vehicle in October, preorders will start at about $560,000.
But that begs the question, who can fly it, and where.
It's not really clear what's legal yet and what kind of license you'd need in this brave new world of personal flying vehicles.
And the FAA Has the final say.
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No license needed to fly this.
NASA's helicopter, it plans to fly on Mars, has passed its flight tests.
Scientists just released this video taken back in January.
It shows the Mars helicopter inside a space simulator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
[UNKNOWN] Then NASA had to recreate conditions on Mars by taking away two thirds of the earth's gravity and making sure the helicopter would survive temperatures as low as 130 degrees.
Now this will be the first heavier than aircraft to fly on Mars.
It weights less than four pounds and contains more than 1500 individual pieces of carbon fiber.
This was the last helicopter's last hover test on Earth.
If all goes according to plan, the next time it flies will be on the red planet It's scheduled to launch with the 2020 rover in July and reach Mars next February
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Boston Dynamics is added again and.
And the company's newest robot can stock warehouse boxes like a [UNKNOWN].
This is an upgraded version of the handle robot which we first saw back in 2017, that version was built for research.
But Handle 3.0 lives a life of manual labor.
Here it's moving boxes that weigh about 11 pounds Boston Dynamics as it can lift up to 33 pounds, and republish that are more than a meter D.There's also another handle on the back, they're taking boxes off a pilot and putting them on a conveyor belt.
Now according to Boston Dynamics, this is not a free program demo.
And Joe has an onboard vision tracking system to track Mark palette.
Then, it identifies individual boxes to pick up and stock.
And through Boston Dynamics [UNKNOWN], the company hasn't said what it plans to do with handle.
It's not clear that plans to put into production or if it's just a proof of concept.
But let's be honest, a box stoking robot probably has bigger implications to industry.
In a robot dog.
That's gonna do for us this week.
I Andy Altman, I'll see you in the future.
