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Finally, a flying car for everybody? It's the idiot-proof aerial commuter

By Peter Shadbolt, for CNN October 3, 2014 -- Updated 1154 GMT (1954 HKT) | Filed under: Innovations

An artist's impression of the MyCopter personal aviation vehicle. The European Union wants to make the dream of a flying car a reality, researching the feasibility of small commuter air vehicles to ease the world's traffic congestion.

An artist's impression of the cockpit of the MyCopter project. Research institutes have spent years designing a cockpit that resembles a car and that anyone can pilot with a minimum of training.

Several flying cars are already in production. The Pal-V can carry two people at 180kph and has a range of 350-500km.

The gyrocopter cruises below 4,000ft and needs 540 feet of runway for take-off and 100 feet to land. The MyCopter project is looking at a design that can lift itself out of traffic with very little headway.

In terms of road performance, the Pal-V can reach a maximum speed of 180 km/h (112mph) has a fuel economy of 28mpg and a range of 750 miles.

Terrafugia's TF-X is designed as a four-seat, plug-in hybrid electric flying car that's capable of performing fly-by-wire vertical take offs and landings.

The company has already produced a two-seater, fixed wing, street legal plane called the Transition.

The Volocopter, one of the world's first electric helicopters, features 18 rotors on a 10-meter-wide carbon frame. The eco-friendly flying machine has been €4 million ($5.4 million) and two years in the making.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• EU research project is looking at feasibility of small commuter air vehicles
• Called 'MyCopter', it aims to consider all the issues surrounding personal aviation vehicles
• Challenges include air traffic systems, crash avoidance technology and accessibility
• The project hopes to have a commuter air vehicle commercially available by 2050

Editor's note: Tomorrow Transformed explores innovative approaches and opportunities available in business and society through technology.

(CNN) -- There may be plenty of idiots on the road, but is putting them in the skies taking it, quite literally, to the next dimension?

For Dr. Heinrich H. Bülthoff -- one of the leading researchers on the 'MyCopter' project -- it's a serious question.

Making an idiot-proof flying car that anyone can pilot has involved years of painstaking research and may be the secret to the long-held dream of firing up the rotors, levitating and simply flying out of the bumper-to-bumper grind.

Now the European Union wants to make the dream a reality, researching the feasibility of small commuter air vehicles to ease the world's traffic congestion.

"It's been a dream of mine since I read it in science fiction books and in the movies as a kid, but science fiction is becoming the reality these days," says Dr. Bülthoff, director of perception, cognition and action at the Max Planck Institute in Tübingen, Germany.

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Under the four-year project, the EU has drawn together six institutes from across Europe to look at the problems associated with commuting in personal aviation vehicles (PAVs). At the center of the research is a focus, not so much on building the vehicle, but on all the issues and challenges surrounding commuter aviation.

In the case of his institute, it's how to make the machine accessible to ordinary drivers.