Slashdot Mirror
Uber Is Researching a New Vertical-Takeoff Ride Offering That Flies You Around (recode.net)
If Uber's recently launched self-driving cars surprised you, wait for the company's "flying" vehicles. Speaking with Recode, Uber's head of products said the company is research small planes that can vertically take off and land, so that they can be used for short-haul flights in cities. From the report:The technology is called VTOL -- which stands for vertical takeoff and landing. Simply put, VTOL is an aircraft that can hover, take off and land vertically, which would also describe a helicopter. But, unlike the typical helicopter, these planes have multiple rotors, could have fixed wings and perhaps eventually would use batteries and be more silent. In time, like cars, such aircraft would be autonomous. Jeff Holden said that he has been researching the area, "so we can someday offer our customers as many options as possible to move around." He added that "doing it in a three-dimensional way is an obvious thing to look at."
That is not new. Many terrorist organizations also offer vertical take-off, especially in cars. The landing seems to be a bit of a bummer, though.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
So, uber is going to be the one to bring us the flying car? I doubt it but good luck to them.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
So, Blade Runner, anyone?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
because Carolina lawn darts (aka Harrier Jets) were a lesson in why that technology was impractical and dangerous.
There's a reason that both the Harrier and Osprey are called the Widowmaker. I doubt a commercial VTOL Uber plane will be a reality in my lifetime due to liability concerns. This is the kind of research that is always "5-10 years from application", like all the miracle cancer cures I've read about over the years -- which I then never heard about again. Just say "20-50 years away at best" and assume Uber won't be around any more when it happens. What a joke of a story.
But, unlike the typical helicopter, these planes have multiple rotors, could have fixed wings and perhaps eventually would use batteries and be more silent.
It's called an Osprey. I'd like to see the day when it's electric and autonomous.
I could be a Silicon Visionary! I'll take ideas from the 19th century, put a 21st century twist on it, and make billions from investors!
Like my idea for an underground super sonic Pneumatic Transit System. I call it the PTS.
I am gonna start combing through 19th century patents and see what else I can steal and use to become a billionaire.
One pebble tossed out at 200 MPH and flying into a rich person's car will end that dream.
Ubers cars are NOT self-driving. In fact, they all have TWO DRIVERS in them. I doubt we will see true self-driving cars (with no Google/Uber engineers behind the wheel in case something goes wrong) in 40 years.
There is so much in the way of what Uber is suggesting that it is absurd for them to be making public statements about it. First of all... Uber. You know, the ride sharing service that let's people make a few extra bucks by giving rides in their fifteen-year old Chevy. I wonder which will come first, flying Uber cars or a town on Mars named Muskville.
Considering the numbers of laws regulating flight in proximity to urban areas and structures, they'll find that the cost of developing the vehicles may be far less than the cost of lobbying for the laws and regulations to be adjusted. The height/distance rules were written with safety consciousness in mind, and have proven themselves to be reasonable and practical. Drone operators have been discovering just how difficult it is to change the rules, because the FAA isn't really worried about shifting policies at a whim to accommodate the "hip new thing" that people want to suddenly be able to fly heavy and dangerous things with sharp high speed edges right over other people's heads. A few pound drone would be far less dangerous than a 1500lb+ vehicle hovering in the middle of a street while pedestrian and vehicle traffic are around.
Add the fact that VTOL is about the least efficient use of fuel to move and transport people by. Flying cars have already been invented. They always seem to fail because to compromise and make them work, you end up with something that isn't a very good plane nor a very good car. Plus, you get to comply with multiple sets of vehicle rules and have to be licensed for them. Now add in automation so they get to certify the autopilots for autonomous usage and you've got a situation where I'm not sure there's enough money in the world to get the testing and proof of safety and regulatory changes done.
Good luck, wake me when you reach the "in just 20 more years" point.
sustained profit: "this system will be the revolutionary way by which people commute every day. it is a disruptive transportation technology that will fuel the 21st century"
incident of injury or death: "we are not, not have we ever been, a VTOL company. We're merely a humble service provider."
Good people go to bed earlier.
Have you seen how your average taxi driver drives around cities?
I can just see how their flying will be.
When did Slashdot become a site that covers SF Startup Press Releases? Most of what Uber & Tesla does not fit the "news for nerds" motto.
Maybe Uber should partner with Moller. That should put them out of business in no time. Even in the age of "drones" and "autonomous cars", Moller still hasn't been able to put together a demonstration model that works for more than a few minutes. And 5 minutes of flight time doesn't really get you anywhere.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The biggest mistake people make, is thinking, if technology X was tested and it failed. that in 50 years with new technology and materials it will still fail.
The problem with making a flying car isn't really the technology. We've known how to make a VTOL aircraft for a long time now. The showstopper is the economics of it. Let's assume you develop a flying car that somehow works. We'll ignore all the technical obstacles that lots of very smart people haven't solved to date and just assume they magically figure it out tomorrow. It still wouldn't work for economic reasons unless you invoke some truly magical sci-fi technology. Why?
1) Physics. The energy requirements to get something the weight of a human aloft are considerable. The fuel costs alone would make it economically prohibitive. And I'm ignoring the engineering compromises that would be necessary to make it light enough to get aloft.
2) Sticker shock. A VTOL aircraft is necessarily going to be more expensive than a standard automobile because it is more complicated and thus more expensive. Even the simplest imaginable version would be far more expensive than what anyone but the super wealthy could afford.
3) Infrastructure. None of the infrastructure for any plausible flying vehicle has been built excepting for airports. The cost to change this would be astronomical. Can you imagine trying to land in the parking lot of your local Walmart without the prop wash endangering everyone around you? There are very good reasons we don't have helicopters landing just anywhere except in cases of dire emergency. The safety concerns alone make it a terrible idea.
There are already asshole bikers making a huge amount of noise in the neighbourhood, I'm pretty sure this is even more noisy due to the high RPMs necessary. Thanks but no thanks.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Like many other "tech" companies, Uber tries to show that they are innovative. However, they are not. Lets illustrate that with flying cars. The topic of flying objects which are heavier than air has been discussed lengthly in engineering. Therefore, it is relatively good understood. First, you need some force to counteract gravity (or disable gravity) and then you need additional forces to move around. In airplanes, this is done with wing which transform kinetic energy of the moving plane in lift. Therefore, either an engine is required to resupply the system with new kinetic energy or you require thermal lift. For vertical lifting, we developed rockets and helicopters which provide a counterforce + some extra to move an object up. All these technologies already exist. Yet they cannot be used to create a flying car which is cheap enough to make is an alternative to a car. Just compare the price and fuel consumption of a small helicopter and a car to see that this is not economical realizable for most people. Therefore, it is not an engineering problem, but a problem of theoretical physics to come up with a way to cancel out gravity. Unfortunately, Uber is not investing in that.
Second, average humans are not capable of flying devices. That is why pilots require a lot of training. Lets assume computer scientists and robot developers are able to create an autonomous flying machine, which is an enormous engineering task, as we are barely able to get it done with cars. Some might say, yes but we have autonomous flying drones and autopilot. The first fail often and military drones need supervision. Autopilots are able to steer a system through the air until something happens which requires human interaction. Also current flight is heavily regulated and controlled by pilots and controllers on the ground. In a "Fifth Element"-like scenario, thousands of cars are flying around. Therefore, you need additional rules, as they are closer together. Just like nowadays on the ground. An autonomous flying machine would have to mange all these rules and understand all other moving objects together which is much more complicated than 2D.
Therefore, such effort is futile, which let me conclude this is just a marketing scam used to show Uber is so great company. While the truth is, they are just a company with a lot of money form venture capitalists which provides an app and enterprise software behind it. Thus, they are just a business model not an engineering company and definitely not a company capable to come up with new physics.
Seems to me like Lyft is really missing out on an easy marketing campaign here.
More silent? How can they be more silent? Silent means they make no noise.
That said, VTOL aircraft are far, far from quiet. Even if you made them battery powered (good luck with that, as the power densities required are really pretty serious) to eliminate most of the power plant noise, they would still be damned loud due to the massive amount of air that needs to be thrust downward in order to move the craft upward. How much air? Equivalent to the weight of the craft. All the time. More, if you want to move up. Given that air is substantially less dense that most flying crafts, this means heaploads of noise. No matter how you cut it, aircraft are loud, close up, as long as you are depending on displacing air to provide thrust.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Power to weight versus cost used to be a huge issue here...
Last I checked physics is still a thing so power to weight considerations are still very much an actively huge issue.
It might not be commonly done outside of the hobby industry, but scaling up quadcopters and adding hybrid engines to maintain a charge long term is no longer an impossibility.
Are you seriously arguing that because we've done it with an RC airplane that it is a trivial exercise to scale up to the size where it can plausibly carry humans safely? Yeah it doesn't work like. The energy costs to get aloft do not scale linearly with size. The bigger the vehicle + cargo the more fuel you need to lift PLUS you need more fuel to lift the extra fuel. This places upper limits on what can practically get aloft and how long you can stay there. Plus even if you deal with the technical problems getting it to be economically viable is a MUCH harder problem. Helicopters have been a thing for a long time but they remain hugely expensive and problematic for use by the General Public. Uber isn't going to crack this problem no matter what they claim.
Finally, 2017 is the long awaited Year of Linux on the .... oh, sorry, I mean Year of the Flying Cars!
Well, to be fair, I guess we have Linux on the phones sitting on many of our desks, and we do have "drones" that could carry plastic army men, ...so... maybe it's just a issue of scale.
Autonomous passenger aircraft has been a possibility for a *very* long time, but didn't take off (*cough*) for a few reasons. Firstly, it's only been recently that such technology could be integrated at a small enough level as to keep the weigh (and, hence, cost) low. Secondly, people like the fact that there's a human in control, even when that control is limited (as is that case with autopilot systems in airliners). Finally, the added complexity of VTOL aircraft compared to fixed wing makes such an endeavour on Uber's part a logistical and maintenance nightmare. The complexity of rotor systems, compared to engine/propeller combinations for fixed wing aircraft, can sometimes be difficult for someone trained in the field to wrap their head around (trust me on this one...).
The legislative dimension is also crippling. We *already* have a system of VTOL passenger transportation: helicopters. To tote people around for profit requires a commercial pilot's license. Is Uber going to demand that of pre-autonomous VTOL "drivers"? Also, "autonomous" doesn't mean *entirely autonomous*; there's still a human pilot capable of overriding control at any point, likely with the same restrictions as an onboard human operator (though I'm sure jurisdiction *may* vary on that). In short, I think uber's trying to slap their logo on the side of a solution for a problem no one has.
Uber thinks they're being innovative, when the reality is they're throwing shit at the wall and hoping something sticks.
They're probably considering this after seeing the EHang 184:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vGd1Oy7Cw0
It seems reasonable if uber offered the service with a small fleet and a high fee, but I don't see it replacing cars any time soon. Mandating 100% driverless cars would be a better solution to increasing traffic throughput. The real challenge of driverless cars is dealing with the other cars on the road that still have drivers. If the goverment said, "all cars must be driverless by 2030" the problem would suddenly become much easier to solve.
Uber can try to shift liability to the end user
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Table-ized A.I.
There's already infrastructure in place for VTOL aircraft in cities: Helipads on rooftops. Hospitals have them.
Cost isn't (as much of) an issue for Uber. They don't do sales, they do for-hire.
If someone could plug into the existing Uber app and provide another selection to the right for "VTOL", you think they wouldn't do brisk business in New York? Hell, shuttle service from downtown to the airports alone would more than pay for it.
Nope, no sig
This is one of those things that will remain a rich people toy at best for the foreseeable future simply due to the amount of energy required. See also: Civilian supersonic flight, space tourism.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The insurance liability for something like this would be astronomical. We already have roads and understand and accept the risks associated with them. With this you have the risk of running into buildings, trees, power lines, etc. Roads are at least well-defined travel ways, the sky not so much. Then you have the risks of falling out of the sky & damaging things below - and the occupants are pretty well dead, so add a few million for them.
Even if fuel & vehicle costs were negligible I could easily see $5 million liability insurance being reasonable for each flight.
It's an unavoidable part of the learning process. When you build a machine that does something that's never been done before, there are always going to be unforeseen problems. That is how you learn that these problems exist and ways to overcome them. The scaredy-cats who would keep us mired in the stone age will rant about the risks and the dangers. But people with long-term vision will pull us along the path of technological advancement. The V-22 Osprey's safety record is actually better than the HH-52 Seaguard (most recognizable as the previous-gen Coast Guard rescue helicopter). Both were built in similar numbers (about 200 vs 175), and operated a similar number of years (about 25 vs 30).
The thing you have to keep in mind about the press is that most of them absolutely suck at math, science, and statistics. That's why they went into journalism instead of STEM. Analyses they make tend to be based more on emotion than on objective data. If they're faced with a choice between an enticing story vs boring numbers which contradict the story, they will run with the story and downplay the numbers.
Its not like there aren't plenty of flying car possibilities (Mollar Skycar, Terrafugia TF-X, Pal-V, etc), the issue keeping them on the ground is funding, cost, regulatory pressures and safety verification. Sadly it will probably take a major investor with some serious political clout, or a country with a non-insane regulatory/liability system to serve as a proving ground in order to overcome the fallacy that light aircraft are some terrible safety hazard. Like anything they'll have their advantages/disadvantages (cars are useless after major snow/rain events, flying cars aren't, flying cars are useless during inclement weather, standard cars are just dangerous at that time) but both have their uses.
Through a number of phases of the modern age, different airlines have attempted to offer air-taxi services from the three main airports around NYC to Manhattan. The economics would seem to make sense at first blush. The relative distances, potential market demand and locations make sense. And, yet none of the big airlines still offer these ad-ons to their mainline service, while, at the same time, they have offered significant incentives to attract big-money customers. The natural conclusion is that the devil is in the details and there must not be sufficient demand or market support for the routes to make financial sense. Not the least of which is that the fraction of the population who feels comfortable riding in a helicopter is small (consider how many people intensely dislike propeller planes, and then understand that helicopters are worse in nearly every way for ride experience when compared to jet flight).
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Uber is trying desperately to use up all that money they were given based on their (relatively simple) app. An app that they can't even make profitable. Apparently they lost around $1.2B in the first half of the year.
They have no clue what they're doing and this pie-in-the-sky stuff is just a bullshit distraction before the money runs out.
I don't know why companies aren't happy to just perfect and run an existing product profitably instead of looking for endless and everlasting growth? It's not sustainable. After all, why shouldn't they when there are investors willing to sign $1.5B cheques for a fucking app.
An automated flying vehicle will require much more communication with the ground/other flying objects than an automated car.
The more communication a vehicle has to make, the more there is opportunity for hacking. I hope security is really tight on these things so we don't see them all hacked by terrorists to fly into the freedom tower... or even by pranksters sending everyone to Cleveland.
/ honey, I swear I didn't instruct my uber to send me to the strip club, a prankster hacked my drone.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
That are developing drones for people transport.
http://phys.org/news/2016-01-chinese-drone-maker-unveils-human-carrying.html
'Self-driving cars' are not even ready for 'prime time' yet, and people have been trying to develop flying cars for literally decades, and now Uber is already trying to sell us the idea as part of their dubious ride-sharing service? Does the driver have lasers on his head, too? Or is it going to be a self-driving flying VTOL car? Is Uber trying to become the first Darwin Award recipient in history (at the cost of the lives of their passengers)?
Someone please put Uber (and Lyft, and whoever else) out of business, before they start getting people killed.
I don't feel like loading their wix-laden website, but there's a company called gotham air that planned to offer $99 air taxi service from manhattan to the airport. No idea if that ever materialized, or if it (dun dun dun) crashed and burned.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Helicopters are a general-purpose aircraft. If you only needed 50 mile range you could probably make a purpose-built hybrid-powered shuttle with better economics than a chopper. And the generation growing up today will be used to the idea of drone quads. This could be a thing in my lifetime ... though I won't be investing in it just yet.
Nope, no sig
I for one wouldn't get into a self-driving uber let alone a self-flying one.
At least it will be quiet.
Perhaps something like the Ehang 184 all electric autonomous quadcopter scaled up from a drone so that it's large enough to carry a single passenger up to 10 miles or roughly 23 minutes of flight. I bet this meets the needs of many Uber trips!
The bigger the vehicle + cargo the more fuel you need to lift PLUS you need more fuel to lift the extra fuel.
If using conventional fuel then you are right. However unlike physical fuel electrical power can be transmitted wirelessly. Of course the technical challenges to do this would be immense for a moving vehicle but it does present a possible option not available to traditionally fuelled vehicles. However given all the challenges with current technology I would agree with your conclusion that Uber is very unlikely to crack this but it remains an intriguing possibility that at some point someone else might.
three main airports around NYC to Manhattan.
I'm thinking of back in the days they had civilian Chinook helicopters providing service to and from the Pan Am building, at least what I remember seeing in the 1960s Clint Eastwood movie "Coogan's Bluff." I always thought that would be cool to take off and land on top of that building. Maybe it just doesn't financially work out (Pan Am no longer exists, and I've not seen that model of helicopter used for passenger service). I was in NYC in 1990s, landed at JFK, got on shuttle bus to downtown hotel and accepted that this will be a very long ride (about 2 hours!). While poking along at avg 2 mph, I see a police station and thinking how do these guys get anywhere quickly Code 3?
Back in 1970s there was helicopter air service from and to LAX, helo was a variation of the Bell 47 (pilot in front, three passenger seats behind). It was featured in Flying magazine as "The fastest way around Los Angeles is in the slowest thing flying."
mfwright@batnet.com
:-)
VTOL pretty much means "helicopters" (we discount military jets with vectored engines). And helicopter manufacturers are stuck in 70-s.
And you can't really make a traditional helicopter cheaper, you have lots of expensive parts because a failure of any of them will cause lithobraking followed by rapid unplanned disassembly. And they can't experiment with multi-rotor systems because the weight of mechanical transmission is prohibitive.
Fortunately, we now have powerful batteries and electric motors. Creating a helicopter or a multi-rotor aircraft capable of lifting a human is not too complicated because of insane power-to-weight ratio of electric propulsion. There are several companies doing just that.
There's still a problem with energy density - it's easy to take off vertically, but the flight time will be around 15-20 minutes.
Maybe they should instead research how they can make revenue exceed expenses, since Uber is pissing money away at a phenomenal rate.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This should work out well for them. The FAA has a great sense of humor, and are well known for letting little things slide. I'm sure they'll have no problem with unpiloted human carrying drones from a company with a great history of regulatory compliance operating in restricted airspaces for commercial purposes.
See Die Hard for how they get around fast.
Nope, no sig
The one thing preventing practical VTOL is energy density. Batteries won't beat kerosene, and kerosene doesn't have the energy density to do the job. Nuclear fission COULD do it, however. If you can't tolerate small reactors, you can't have your flying car. IAAP