Transport
| Emerging technology | Status | Potentially marginalized technologies | Potential applications | Related articles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Airless tire | Research, development, early prototypes | Conventional tire | Safer tires | Tweel |
| Alcubierre drive | Attempting to create a warp field in lab tests | Interstellar exploration and colonization | Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program | |
| Alternative fuel vehicle | Commercialization, diffusion | Internal combustion engine | Reducing air pollution, decreasing oil consumption | Electric vehicle, Hydrogen vehicle |
| Beam-powered propulsion | Theory | Laser propulsion | ||
| Driverless car | Research, development, prototypes | Driver's licenses, rules of the road, traffic lights, traffic sign, highway patrols, vehicle insurances | Reducing traffic collision, increasing road capacity, reducing air pollution, reducing traffic congestion | Google driverless car, General Motors EN-V, CityCar, MIT Car |
| Flexible wings (X-53 Active Aeroelastic Wing, Adaptive Compliant Wing), fluidic flight controls | Experiments, prototypes | Other flight control systems: ailerons, elevators, elevons,
flaps, flaperons |
Controlling aircraft, ships | Aircraft flight control system, BAE Systems Demon, fluidics |
| Flying car | Early commercialization, prototypes | Automobile, road | More effective transportation | Terrafugia Transition, Moller M400 Skycar, Urban Aeronautics X-Hawk |
| Hovertrain, Ground effect train | Research, development | Conventional trains | Trains with higher speed | Aérotrain, Duke Hospital PRT, Hovercraft |
| Ion thruster | In use | |||
| Jet pack or backpack helicopter | Early commercialization, prototypes | Automobile | More effective transportation | |
| Maglev train, Vactrain | Research, early commercialization | Conventional trains | Trains with higher speed | Shanghai Maglev Train, Linimo |
| Mass driver | Prototypes | |||
| Personal rapid transit | Early commercialization, diffusion | Automobile | More effective transportation | Morgantown PRT, ULTra |
| Physical Internet | Research | conventional logistics | ||
| Propellant depot | Research, development | Heavy lift rockets | enabling deep-space missions with more massive payloads, satellite life extension, ultimately lowering the cost per kg launched to space | |
| Pulse detonation engine | Testbed demos | |||
| Reusable launch system | Research, development | Expendable launch system | Surface-to-orbit transport | SpaceX Grasshopper |
| Scramjet | Research, development | Conventional jet engine | Hypersonic aircraft | NASA X-43 |
| Solar sail | In 2010, IKAROS was the world's first spacecraft designed to use solar sailing propulsion to be successfully launched | Space travel | ||
| Space elevator | Research, development | Non-rocket spacelaunch, Orbital ring, Sky hook, Space fountain | ||
| Spaceplane | Research, development | Conventional airliners | Hypersonic transport | A2, Skylon |
| Supersonic transport | Commercialization existed, diffusion | Conventional airliners | Airliner with higher speed | Concorde, Tupolev Tu-144 |
Read more about this topic: List Of Emerging Technologies
Famous quotes containing the word transport:
“One may disavow and disclaim vices that surprise us, and whereto our passions transport us; but those which by long habits are rooted in a strong and ... powerful will are not subject to contradiction. Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)