Slashdot Mirror
NASA Is Working With Uber on Its Flying Taxi Project
Ride-hailing service Uber on Wednesday took a step forward in its plan to make autonomous "flying taxis" a reality, signing a contract with NASA to develop the software to manage them. From a report: Uber said at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon that it signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA for the development of "unmanned traffic management." This is NASA's push to figure out how unmanned aerial systems (UAS), such as drones that fly at a low altitude, can operate safely. Uber wants to make vertical take-off and landing vehicles. That will allow their flying cars to take off and land vertically. They will fly at a low altitude. This is the start-up's first partnership with a U.S. federal government agency. NASA is also working with other companies to develop traffic management for these low altitude vehicles. "UberAir will be performing far more flights on a daily basis than it has ever been done before. Doing this safely and efficiently is going to require a foundational change in airspace management technologies," Jeff Holden, chief product officer at Uber, said in a statement on Wednesday. "Combining Uber's software engineering expertise with NASA's decades of airspace experience to tackle this is a crucial step forward for Uber Elevate."
So they will with 'ueber' the other uber vehicles.
You will use a LOT more energy to move a human through the air (especially in something that hovers) than to roll them along a paved surface. It will simply cost more even if it works perfectly.
And it won't work perfectly, because the failure modes are worse, the weather restrictions greater, and you're still going to need a place to land and it won't be right next to your destination in most cases.
Cars win. If there's a futuristic transport mode, it's tiny self-driving vehicles that - perhaps - can hop on a rail car for long high-speed trips.
Also if they need a pilot then it will cost a bit to have commercial pilots. And also the costs of FAA code audits.
FAA Maintenance rules for commercial use are higher then non commercial use.
Uber wants to make vertical take-off and landing vehicles. That will allow their flying cars to take off and land vertically.
Thanks for that useful clarification - I wondered what vertical take-off and landing vehicles would be able to do.
Flying cars, and even self-driving cars, encourage MORE cars and there's nowhere to put them(*).
People watch the Jetsons and think the flying car is the ultimate future. No. The ultimate Jetsons future is the folding car, where at the end of his commute George pushes a button and his flying car folds up into a briefcase small enough to lie on his desk. Work on that, NASA!
* Okay, maybe your self-driving car can drop you off, then drive itself away somewhere, sit around, chatting with other self-driving cars about how their owners treat them, maybe get itself into trouble in a traffic jam just when you page it to come pick you up. Great. Your own car tells you it's going to be late because some asshole autonomous Bolt won't get out of lane. Then it'll get all hurt when you hitch a ride with a friend, sulks in the garage for a week before an online update cheers it up again.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
The ultimate Jetsons future is the folding car, where at the end of his commute George pushes a button and his flying car folds up into a briefcase small enough to lie on his desk.
Maybe we just need to pursue an idea from Ancient Arabic Fairy Tales: a Flying Carpet!
Just roll it up and tuck it under your arm.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
>Flying cars, and even self-driving cars, encourage MORE cars
Only if you're committed to the idea of individual ownership. With autonomous vehicles though you have the potential to make a "taxi service" that's cheaper to use than owning the car, while still retaining almost all the convenience (aside from using your car for storage). Most people use their car what, maybe an hour or two per day? So 4-6 people could potentially share the same car if their schedules meshed perfectly, each paying under 1/4 of the purchase price and a bit more in mileage/maintenance costs than they normally would (since the car also has to drive between users).
Obviously finding 4 people whose schedules mesh that perfectly is all but impossible, but with a big enough pools of cars and riders the discrepancies are easy to compensate for.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
A broken-down vehicle will no longer just cause a traffic nightmare, but will be
Death From Above!
With autonomous vehicles though you have the potential to make a "taxi service" that's cheaper to use than owning the car, while still retaining almost all the convenience (aside from using your car for storage).
Why wait for autonomous vehicles ?
Car-sharing services already work well as of today. And some (as the specific "free floating" example I've linked) are completely straight forward :
inside the coverage zone, you can pick up any car you find (an app can help you locate one if there's currently none in street down from your building) and leave it anywhere in the coverage zone.
Most people use their car what, maybe an hour or two per day? So 4-6 people could potentially share the same car if their schedules meshed perfectly, each paying under 1/4 of the purchase price and a bit more in mileage/maintenance costs than they normally would (since the car also has to drive between users).
Obviously finding 4 people whose schedules mesh that perfectly is all but impossible, but with a big enough pools of cars and riders the discrepancies are easy to compensate for.
Actually there has been some studies done by ETHZ on the above mentioned car sharing system, and indeed, it's been proven than one such car replace four regular cars. (That's not even an autonomous car. It doesn't move on it's own to the next user, it just stays waiting in the street for you, but as you mention, with a big enough fleet of shared cars, it works out eventually).
Station-based shared cars systems are also similarly popular in Europe, too.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
In a clean up company to take care of all the falling debris from 'fender benders'
they're private jets. And I do not like the idea of our ruling elites getting access to them. For one thing Roads, like most things, are allowed because they suit their needs. Take that away and they'll fight to stop funding them so they can pocket the costs. And then there's the massive amount of resources we're going to devote to getting them around town. Those resources are still finite and if we're spending a huge amount of them on something so trivial it's going to impact the rest of us.
It's another example of our society being built first to service the needs of wealthy elites and then us working slobs being told to eat cake.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Cars don't do very well on icy roads, or in low visibility conditions. Even if you make flying taxis as safe as cars on road for these weather conditions, it would not be enough. Liability of cars on icy roads is grandfathered into the system. Autonomous flying taxis are new. They will find it very difficult to get the same sweet deal on liability.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Your idea is great, for other people. Just not me.
I honestly can't stand most people. The majority of people are loud, smelly, obnoxious, assholes, who absolutely refuse to cleanup their own messes.
So unless someone is going to clean these vehicles on a VERY regular basis, they will be unusable in a very short time. There is a ride share company that parks their cars down the street from my work. I walk by them on quite regularly, from what I have seen, you couldn't get me in one of these cars without a full hazmat suit, and I used to detail cars for a living.
Lastly, I am not germ phobic, but this is just plain disgusting.
First law of people: People are generally stupid.
Actually, the first A in NASA is Aeronautics
FTFY. The GP is right.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I wonder why NASA thinks Uber has some know how about flying autonomous vehicles.
Their ground autonomous vehicles have not being very impressing so far