NASA: We're Not Building Flying Taxi Software For Uber (theregister.co.uk)

News outlets reported on Wednesday that Uber had signed a contract with NASA to develop software for the ride-hailing company's autonomous "flying taxis." A day later, the space agency has clarified its involvement in the project and the specifics of the contract. From the report: Uber's chief product officer Jeff Holden spoke at the Web Summit in Lisbon yesterday where he was promoting the fledgling autonomous taxi project, revealed last year, Uber Elevate. And of course he never claimed that NASA was working on software for his firm, merely explaining that it had inked an agreement to work with the public body on the latter's air traffic control project. Uber told us that while NASA was not "committing funding or anything like that", it said "having their decades of aeronautic experience actively collaborating with our engineers is a huge help for tackling the aviation traffic management hurdles." A NASA spokesperson, meanwhile, told us Uber had indeed signed what it described as a "generic Space Act Agreement" for participation in the programme back in January, joining a "multitude" of others. The project and its members are "researching prototype technologies for a UAS Traffic Management (UTM) system that could develop airspace integration requirements for enabling safe, efficient low-altitude operations," according to NASA's website. So no new news on the software front.

Comments

Flying taxis won't be landing in your driveway.

[Chrisq]

As somebody pointed out in a previous post, to take off a flying taxi needs to generate down-thrust greater than it's mass (including the passengers). This will be very noisy, and blow down anything not fixed down nearby, including bins (trash cans), garden furniture, pets, little old ladies and cyclists. Regulation will undoubtedly mean that they can only go to and from designated landing pads

Re:Flying taxis won't be landing in your driveway.

[Hognoxious]

needs to generate down-thrust greater than it's mass

Weight, not mass.

And "its", not "it's".

Re:Flying taxis won't be landing in your driveway.

[amalcolm]

Before the car arrived, houses were built without driveways or garages. Many survive and owners are forced to part on the road. It's not hard to imagine new houses with purpose build pads (on the roof, maybe?), but this will take along time and older housing stock would be difficult to modify.
This pales in comparison to the other less tractable ones, like maintainance, fail-safety, traffic control, range etc.
With a car you can set off without a reserved parking space at your destination, in the reasonable belief that one will be available. Not so easy with something that flies, and good luck with asking the flying taxi driver (if there is one) to 'drop me on the corner, please.