Slashdot Mirror
Uber Shows Its Flying Car Prototype (cnbc.com)
Uber has unveiled its "flying car" concept aircraft at its second annual Uber Elevate Summit, which showcases prototypes for its fleet of airborne taxis. From a report: The flying cars, which the company hopes to introduce to riders in two to five years, will conduct vertical takeoffs and landings from skyports, air stations on rooftops or the ground. Ultimately, company officials say these skyports will be equipped to handle 200 takeoffs and landings an hour, or one every 24 seconds. At first, the flying cars will be piloted, but the company aims for the aircraft to fly autonomously. The prototypes look more like drones than helicopters, with four rotors on wings. Company officials say that will make them safer than choppers, which operate on one rotor. They'll fly 1,000 to 2,000 feet above ground and will be quieter than a helicopter, producing half the noise of a truck driving past a house.
Apparently in 2018 a prototype is a 1:100 scale model and a badly rendered CGI video.
Technically, if I were the programmer, I'd much rather write the software for controlling a flying car than one that drives on roads. Drone software's pretty much a solved problem since it's up, over, down and you have far fewer things that you need to actually detect. Not that I'd want the liability either way.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
People keep shooting for complete automation when all that's needed really (in flight) is a system that will reliably get you off the ground, back on the ground and hold a course while staying in communication with ATC if necessary and avoid other aircraft and controlled airspace.
Make no mistake, a, "Flying car", is an aircraft first and car second. Putting someone with no flying experience in this kind of vehicle is a bad idea all the way around.
You can make it automated enough that learning it would be something like getting a different class driver's license, but expecting to get grandma one of these to take her to the picnic is a really bad idea.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The issue is that micromanaging multiple rotors is, relatively speaking, a solved problem and that's generally the drone use case that is considered 'solved' (translating a high level maneuver to the appropriate rotor actions). Cars do not have this as a challenge, rolling the car forward and turning it left and right is not something that requires a 'drive by wire' sort of system, so there isn't really that much of an analogous challenge
Autonomous drone navigation without a remote pilot is not a solved problem, much as it is not a solved problem for driving.
Even assuming there were some examples of autonomous drone deliveries for small packages, the problem is the amount of damage a 10lb drone with payload can inflict accidentally is different than something weighing several hundred pounds. Additionally the speed is going to be different, drone deliveries are not generally looking to move at hundreds of miles an hour (can be patient, no human passenger, the benefit is mainly skipping circuitous road defined paths). So on top of being heavier, they would be wanting to move probably an order of magnitude faster, generally.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Uber has unveiled its "flying car" concept aircraft at its second annual Uber Elevate Summit, which showcases prototypes for its fleet of airborne taxis.
A flying car is not the same thing as an air taxi. A flying car is a road going car that can also get airborne. An air taxi is an aircraft which is used to taxi people between airports/heliports. This is the later. It has no ability to traverse roads and therefore is not a car. You could in principle use a flying car as a taxi but since flying cars are not practical because... physics, it's a moot issue.
Can we please drop the idiotic notion of a flying car? Unless someone invents something equivalent to Tony Stark's arc reactor it will not be possible to have a flying car that is anything more than a fragile toy. No power source we possess or are in any danger of developing has sufficient power to weight ratio to change this fact. Flying cars are a stupid idea for a lot of reasons but this one fact alone is sufficient to demonstrate that fact.
Frankly if I was an Uber investor (I'm not) I'd be pissed they are wasting money on this sort of stupid stuff when they are losing money at a breathtaking clip with no signs of stopping or obvious path to profiability.
I rather think this is a "jumping the shark" moment of a company at the edge of failing. Uber's business model is under assault, and their next best option was automation which they have now failed at. They need something to keep investors and backers from cutting their losses and tanking the company as they leave.
I find this very frustrating as well, but the genie is out of the bottle. People will carry on calling these ridiculous contraptions flying cars regardless. And, yes, short of a breakthrough in power generation technology, probably preceded by a bigger one in fundamental physics, the flying cars that we have in mind will indefinitely and stubbornly remain in the realm of science-fiction.
mv^2/2 + mgh > mv^2/2
Why woud they make an Air Taxi? They are not a taxi company.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
There are sooo many reasons why Uber is out of their minds with this "pie in the sky" idea.
First off, as others pointed out, this isn't a car. No way it's going to take to the roads.
Second, if they thought the rules for driving where complex and exacting, the rules for flying are more so.
Third, automating a passenger carrying flying machine with sufficient fail safes to satisfy the FAA is going to be a seriously expensive project that's going to take YEARS of work just to document and get a whole bunch of laws and regulations changed to allow.
Fourth, you will need a horde of A&P certified mechanics to maintain these flying machines and do the required safety checks within the required time frames. These guys and gals don't come cheap and the local auto shop won't be good enough.
Finally, finding pilots who are qualified to fly passengers around for money in a helicopter is going to be very expensive. We have a grave pilot shortage in this country now, and given the costs and time frames required to move new pilots though the training, Uber doesn't have a snowballs chance of hiring enough pilots for even a small fleet of these things.
I conclude that Uber is dreaming. This is nothing more than pie in the sky pipe dreams by idiots who have no clue how they are going to do this. Dream on boys, let me know when you have a business plan I can laugh at.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Pretty much every technology was at one time for the rich only. Eventually it becomes so cheap and commonplace that everyone has it. Indoor plumbing was unheard of for the common people at one point and now you can scarcely find a place without it. Even cars in general were the same at one point and now almost everyone in the country has one. Of the working population, only 3.4% households do not have a vehicle and we're moving towards the point where about half of households have more vehicles than people in the household that are working. Given enough time, flying cars (or whatever future invention that replaces the automobiles of today) will be the same as well.
Any new technology is going to be expensive at first, which limits customers to those wealthy enough to afford it. Just like cellular phones were when they first hit the market, where the phone cost thousand of dollars, wasn't truly all that portable, and you paid roughly the equivalent of a dollar a minute on top of that just to use it. If you saw someone using one back in the 80's, they were probably a celebrity or a rich Wall Street investor type. Now cell phones are so ubiquitous that homeless people can have them and they've got loads of other capabilities on top of that so that if you have an Android smart phone you can get by without owning a computer or a TV since it can do those things for you.
I hope that rich people love their flying cars and want to sink loads of their money into them. Because when that happens, people are going to be lining up to try and get some of their money and they're going to have to find better ways of producing those flying cars for less money. Eventually they'll get to the point where the common schmucks like you and I can have one too, just like with automobiles, cell phones, and everything else that's ever existed. Of course you'll just take that for granted and be too busy whining about the best minds trying to give the rich personal space cruisers. You'll probably be complaining about it through the neural-internet interface in you flying car.
Or we can build them homes?
This.
Jeff Bezos recently spent $40,000,000 to build a clock inside a goddamned mountain. I can't help but think how many homes he could have built with that (in San Fran? Like 35.)
Having been homless myself I can say 100% of homeless that are homeless for more than a few months are homeless by their own choice. There are many govt and private churches ready to help them get jobs and shelter. They're only homeless because they're on drugs or crazy or refuse to work or a combination of the three. Look at how many illegal aliens pour into the US and somehow find jobs and shelter all without having a valid social security card which means there are many jobs they are ineligible for.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone