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."
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.
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.
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.
Vertical take off technology use to depend on a skill pilot to manually account for dozens of corrections per second. Computer can handle thousands of corrections per second.
Equipping a device the person transporting was considered one of the lightest component, while now it is one of the heaviest.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
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.
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.