Slashdot Mirror
Passenger-Carrying Drone Gets Symbolic Approval For Test Flights In Nevada (theverge.com)
The Verge reports: "Chinese company Ehang caught our eye at CES earlier year, with the firm unveiling an autonomous quadcopter prototype it said was capable of ferrying human passengers without a pilot. We were wary of these unproven claims, but Ehang is obviously forging ahead with the vehicle. The company recently reached an agreement with Nevada's governor's office to develop the Ehang 184 at the state's FAA-approved UAV test site. However, this news should be taken with a pinch of salt: the Ehang 184 still isn't approved for testing by the FAA itself, and the company has yet to show a fully working prototype." Submitter kheldan adds this commentary: This should put you drone advocates' and self-driving car advocates' faith in your ideals to the test: Would you step into one of these and let it fly you away somewhere? I wouldn't!
Ehang says it plans to begin testing at the FAA-approved site some time later this year. Some of the difficulties it will have to face include creating an autonomous navigation system that can detect small obstacles like power lines, creating and regulating fixed paths for air travel, and managing the limitations of battery life (Ehang claims the 184 has a maximum flight time of 23 minutes).
Medical and rescue missions come to mind. 23 minutes is a lot of time for a prototype carrying someone.
What's with the slashdot luddites? I feel like you'd be the same group of people to say the same thing about the horseless carriage or that new metal 'bronze'.
If it can support my weight (350 pounds) and has good flight/battery time, I'll get one.
Quick, convenient point-to-point transportation that's not subject to traffic jams? You're totally right, nobody wants that.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"capable of terrifying passengers without a pilot"
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Seriously, what's the point? Given that the flight time is 23 minutes, this is virtually useless for any serious travel.
Nobody is going to use a quadcopter for long distance travel. That is not the use case. It would be useful as a short distance shuttle, say from a rooftop in downtown SF to SFO, or downtown NYC to JFK.
Furthermore, it's likely to be far more expensive than services like Uber and Lyft.
Yes, and Uber is more expensive than riding a bike, and a bike is more expensive than walking. People are willing to spend money to save time.
it solves a problem that doesn't exist and never will exist.
Except that there are many existing businesses that offer piloted helicopters for about a thousand dollars an hour, to do pretty much the same thing this drone does.
I once paid $300 to ride in a helicopter over Mauna Loa. It was worth it. I would have been happy to save money and take a drone instead, as long as it had a reasonable track record of safety (maybe established by hauling cargo to remote roadless sites).
...and animated video is the only thing this company has ever shown. Have they even every flown one for real?
PS.. Anyone else see a problem with the lower prop locations or are they disposables?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
But I'm still not believing that there's any market at all for such things.
If there is a market for fire trucks with long ladders, there is a market for this device.
The economics of point-to-point VTOL travel make a lot more sense when you factor in the lives lost every day in car crashes, and what we spend on building roads.
What I see in the near future for this technology is surface roads becoming two lane tracks for heavy cargo only, and people using a mix of short-range VTOL for local trips and conventional aircraft for long trips. We'll be able to reduce the urban heat-island effect by having far less paved surface area, and our personal transportation will even take less energy since we could go point-to-point along minimal distance routes.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I think this would be a good use-case for an airframe parachute http://cirrusaircraft.com/innovation/airframe-parachute/.
This should put you drone advocates' and self-driving car advocates' faith in your ideals to the test: Would you step into one of these and let it fly you away somewhere? I wouldn't!
Sure, I'd be happy to, once it has actually been developed and the kinks worked out.
This is a totally solvable problem, it just requires time and money.
I've been flying for 15 years, the computer is a better pilot than a human is, in terms of control. Then it just becomes decision making ability. That needs to be worked on, but for fixed flights from point A to point B, known locations, that is totally doable.
As for "emergencies", yes they happen, but the reality is, not actually that often. For example, the number of pilots who have real engine failures in helicopters is actually lower than the number of injuries and deaths from training for them.
Frank Robinson (of Robinson Helicopters) actually proposed to the FAA that auto-rotation practice be stopped, because so many people were getting hurt doing it in his R22 compared to the few that actually had an engine quit.
What's the difference between a drone and a plane on autopilot?
...more ideas to steal/circumvent (from other companies testing drones there) and re-produce back at home (in China). *PROFIT*
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
What about the concept of having one of these as an emergency evacuation route from the 56th floor of a sky scraper. Granted you'd have to be well off to afford one but you'd not need a pilots license, or the ability to base jump, or depend on a 3 minute elevator that might possibly not be in service. I've had to flee the 25th floor of a 40 floor building on foot in emergency lighting at night during a fire following an earth quake. Not a fun experience by any stretch of the imagination. Luckily I was young, in good shape, and not burdened by having any family or handicapped friends to see after.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
All props are consumable items and eventually become wall art.
Those look like they were bought out of the giant scale RC plane market.
At least they have six, gives the computer a chance at a controlled crash landing if one fails. Of course the passenger is sitting more or less in rotating plane, so good broken prop catching fun potential.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
23 minutes of flight time can get you to many more places than 23 minutes of drive time in San Fransisco, New York City, and Los Angeles.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The first horseless carriages were death traps and I probably wouldn't ride one of those either. It's not like they had seatbelts, power brakes/steering, crumple zones, or even basic safety anything. I'll wait until the technology matures before making history the hard way.
The economics of point-to-point VTOL travel make a lot more sense when you factor in the lives lost every day in car crashes, and what we spend on building roads.
How can you claim that when you don't know how many might be killed in VTOL and you don't know how much it will cost? Aren't they the two fundamental pieces of data to qualify your statement?
"Seriously, what's the point? Given that the flight time is 23 minutes, this is virtually useless for any serious travel."
Even with that limited range, I could see a market for delivery of first-class passengers between an airport and downtown, for close-by values of 'downtown', connecting with regular flights.
Nobody is going to use a quadcopter for long distance travel. That is not the use case. It would be useful as a short distance shuttle, say from a rooftop in downtown SF to SFO, or downtown NYC to JFK.
Sorry, Manhattan to JFK is 18 miles. You've forgotten mileage from the drone hub to your penthouse and from JFK back to the hub. Anywhere this thing can take you, it's only going to save a few minutes over ground transport.
Drone tourism I can see.
To small for Medical and an drone for that may need to make an manual landing just about any where and not just pre planned landing zones.
Think about it: cars hurtle towards each other in very narrow channels on the surface. When you add the third dimension, it's a lot easier to have plenty of space around all vehicles, as well as much shorter transit times (and shorter routes).
Traffic control for aerial vehicles can be done on a peer-to-peer basis with no central management at all. Roads are horrendously expensive, at $7 million per mile in rural areas, and $11 million per mile in urban areas for six-lane highways.
What makes air cars feasible is going fully robotic.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
What about?
15 Minutes Grand Canyon Tour,
State of the Act Pilotless Drone
Each trip charge for US$100. You will have a long lineup of tourists from all over the world.
i'd rather use the first benz than a horse though.. from safety perspective.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
whirlybirds can't safely descend vertically at speed, the rotors enter their own downwash and you end up in a Vortex Ring State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... this is how real helicopters crash and drones too. You can put a drone into that state fairly easily on a still day, just drop fast in one spot, then apply power and note you are still dropping under full power for quite a long way until you apply some tilt or just manage to stop when you get near the ground. If they don't understand the dynamics of this then I am not going to be getting into one.
When we said we wanted flying cars, this is not exactly what we meant!
1. Little wizzy blades are not efficient. Helicopters are more efficient, and fixed wing aircraft are even more efficient.
2. 23 minute flight time, but what is the recharge time? Certainly longer than getting another victim^H^H^H^H^H^Hpassenger in.
3. What is plan B when something goes wrong. I've flown quads, and sometimes the processor does something unplanned.
4. wizzy blades near the ground, how long before someone gets hurt by these blades?
5. Prototype aircraft usually gain 20-100% weight by the time all the required stuff goes in, performance goes down.
Many times you see quad copter fliers get the idea the scaling them up is a good idea. The reality is, that the economics don't work, they aren't efficient.
Are you a train executive from the early 1900s? Because you sound like one. They could have OWNED the airline industry, but they didn't. They did some studies and said "Yes, it will be feasible to fly from coast to coast in 5 hours, but it will be expensive. No one will want to pay for that when they could simply sit on a train FOR THREE DAYS." They thought airline travel would never take off. (Pardon the pun.) And look where they are now.
Do you really never take trips shorter than 23 minutes? (Fun fact: my commute is 10.) Do you think that these will never get more powerful and more efficient?
"this is virtually useless for any serious travel."
Yeah. I would only use it 500 times a year -- to commute to and from work every day. (1,000 times, if you include going to and from lunch.) You're right, that's not serious at all. This guy should just close the company and then kill himself for wasting your time.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.