Marlo Anderson: Have you been thinking about what the future of transportation looks like? Well, I have a leader in this in this field right here, Dr. Mark with SkyDrive. And really appreciate you being on the show today. So tell me a little bit about where you’re at right now with SkyDrive. And where you think things are going in the future.
Dr. Mark: Okay, well, the vehicle you can see behind me right here is, that’s our technology demonstrator that flew in 2020, a one person, Evie tall machine. And that was really just to prove, okay, we can get this thing flying safely. Now, we’re very busy right now working on the certifiable product, which will be released in 2025. And that will be a leisure and tourism two seater, quite modest range. But the main thing really is to achieve that type certificate, get the safety in there, because that’s by far the number one thing.
Marlo: Did you ever think in your lifetime that, you know, when you were younger, that you would actually get to a point where we would actually see flying cars?
Dr. Mark: Funnily enough, yes. Yeah. I mean, I knew I still know it’s gonna be difficult. But it’s one of those goals and dreams that I’ve always had an annex great that there’s no an industry and an ecosystem, supporting that idea. And we can drive things forward. And the diversity of our competitors is amazing. And, and it’s great. It’s great to see so many different solutions for different use cases. And it is a dream that hopefully we can bring, bring to reality.
Marlo: you’ve talked to your test pilots, what are they what how do they feel about this technology?
Dr. Mark: So yeah, I mean, the the formation of SkyDrive really has been from come from the drone industry, mixed with automotive guys. And then I was the first person we sort of deep aerospace background, but now we’re bringing in more experienced aerospace guys. And it’s great to see all the different approaches to this type of vehicle. And they were test pilots. They just love the challenge every day of sort of seeing how the control characteristics of this type of vehicle vary depending on weather conditions, what the system is doing, and then the feedback loop into the design team, and how we can make the improvements and make it a truly easy to fly system. But above all the safe systems play, which isn’t just the redundancy and reliability, which of course is in that it’s also things like the the human machine interface, because STL five in 2025 will have a pile on the model. As you probably know, most accidents happen because of human error or human machine interface.
Marlo: So this is the future of transportation right here. For Tech on back, this is your guru of geek Marlo Anderson.
