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."

Comments

Can nobody do the math???

[Baron_Yam]

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.

Re:Can nobody do the math???

[AmiMoJo]

Even if you somehow overcame all that, the other major problem is noise. Because you have to move a lot of air to life that amount of weight, it's impossible to make it quiet and non-disruptive (strong winds blowing everything nearby over).

The only people who will be able to make use of this are the same ones who can use helicopters now. It's basically a cheaper helicopter alternative. Maybe they will offer semi-affordable hops between helipads.

Parking! Congestion!

[WheezyJoe]

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.