NASA Tests Flying Airbag

coondoggie writes "NASA is looking to reduce the deadly impact of helicopter crashes on their pilots and passengers with what the agency calls a high-tech honeycomb airbag known as a deployable energy absorber. So in order to test out its technology NASA dropped a small helicopter from a height of 35 feet to see whether its deployable energy absorber, made up of an expandable honeycomb cushion, could handle the stress. The test crash hit the ground at about 54MPH at a 33 degree angle, what NASA called a relatively severe helicopter crash."

Re:Severe Crash?

[AndersOSU]

how many helicopters are generating zero lift when they hit the ground? What's important is not the height of helicopter crashes, but the speed. I can certainly imagine worse accidents than 53mph at 33 degrees, but I'm willing to take NASA's word for it that this is "relatively severe."

Re:This is a great development

[CaptSlaq]

Oooh, I am *ALWAYS* hesitant to put that much control into something that would have (effectively) very limited failover capability. Semi-autonomous vehicles in combination with said centralized oversight (eg: malfunction notification of a specific unit that the vehicle's software could try to navigate around) would be the far more sane way to do it, IMO.

Mercedes and BMW are both heavily investing in stuff that will make the autonomous vehicle a reality in a few years. Some things are already making it to the production line as we speak, like automatic brake control (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensotronic_Brake_Control) and automated parking systems (http://gizmodo.com/196551/lexus-self-parking-car-video-and-review) just to name a couple.