Uber Is Researching a New Vertical-Takeoff Ride Offering That Flies You Around (recode.net) 135
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."
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So, (Score:3)
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Re:So, (Score:5, Funny)
Didn't they already try this in the US but got shot down by the FAA
It wasn't the FAA; It was some guy in Kentucky.
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...And no mention of Moller?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moller_M400_Skycar
Paul Moller is a first-class, well-credentialed, Fruitcake, with blarney so impressive, that even he believes in it. Very early on, a Physicist that I knew was so enthusiastically taken in, he put $30K into the venture, and he soberly ended up leading one of the later lawsuits.
The funny thing is, Moller is right; the Physics behind what he is still doing is valid. But his Engineering is off, way off. Paul Moller is an eternal optimi
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Paul Moller is a well-known scammer who peddles fake flying car prototypes every few years to suck up funds from the gullible.
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Spinners? (Score:2)
Re:Spinners? (Score:4, Informative)
600+lbs of multi-rotor thrust will not even approach silent, unless they have access to "black helicopter" tech - which seems to have stayed out of the "reality domain" for a very long time.
Re: Spinners? (Score:2)
Re:Hope the technology has come a long way (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Power to weight versus cost used to be a huge issue here, with even military aircraft like the Harrier limited to hover times measured in seconds rather than hours due to the need to carry enough water to cool the engine capable of supplying a hover.
These days, much smaller engines can supply an electrical recharge to batteries and motors, allowing for assisted electric flights that are both lighter and extremely powerful while running much cooler, all at a relatively lower cost.
It might not be commonly don
Scale and power vs weight (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Scale and power vs weight (Score:4, Insightful)
Uber isn't going to crack this problem no matter what they claim
Quite right. It's all hype. I have little confidence in Uber, especially considering how they run their business; it's run like something organized crime would run, trying to be 'legit'. Actually makes me wonder if Uber is just a front for money laundering, or maybe as a way to hide the transport of contraband? In any case I seriously doubt this is anything more than a way to grab media attention.
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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.
Several outfits have now demonstrated an electric multicopter large enough to carry a human for twenty minutes.
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.
It doesn't have to be affordable to every tom, dick and asshole. It doesn't have to be viable everywhere in the country. It only has to be viable in a large enough market to afford a few such aircraft. Also, helicopter air taxi services are a thing. People with more money than you or I regularly use them.
Electrical Fuel Transmission (Score:2)
The bigger the vehicle + cargo the more fuel you need to lift PLUS you need more fuel to lift the extra fuel.
If using conventional fuel then you are right. However unlike physical fuel electrical power can be transmitted wirelessly. Of course the technical challenges to do this would be immense for a moving vehicle but it does present a possible option not available to traditionally fuelled vehicles. However given all the challenges with current technology I would agree with your conclusion that Uber is very unlikely to crack this but it remains an intriguing possibility that at some point someone else might.
Re:Hope the technology has come a long way (Score:4, Funny)
Look... a 5 ounce drone couldn't possibly lift a 1 pound cocoanut... it's a simple matter of weight ratios...
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It could be carried by an African drone...
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What if we tie a string to the bottom of two drones?
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Sumo 1: "you have dishonored my profession."
The poor economics of flying cars (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I agree with your conclusion - I don't think we're going to see personal flying transport anytime soon - but I think you're exaggerating the case against.
It actually isn't that much energy to get a human being up 100 ft (humans are light, and transportation is already very energy expensive) nor does it necessarily take a ton of energy to keep them there. Physics has no problem with (just as an example off the top of my hea
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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.
Show your math. I'm sure someone would be willing to pay at least that part.
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.
They don't actually make any sense unless they are autonomous, because you're just having to pay the fuel penalty for the pilot — who can reasonably be replaced by a computer the size of your testicle.
None of the infrastructure for any plausible flying vehicle has been built excepting for airports.
Well, that is most of the required infrastructure. You can use their radio navigation beacons.
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?
We're talking about a lightweight vehicle by definition. It won't take much of a rooftop pad for it to land on.
A much bigger problem is
Re: The poor economics of flying cars (Score:1)
A 300km range vtol electric craft can be built with about 25% payload mass (I do this professionally). 300kg of batteries and motors will cost less than $50/kg in mass production so about $15k per person. Similar to premium cars and motorbikes.
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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.
Yes, it is the technology... new technology is what makes the economics work or not work. Successful new technology has always been about making the economics work. Lighter stronger materials..... lighter more powerful engines and motors, denser energy storage in batteries, along with lighter more powerful and more energy efficient computers necessary for controlling all those systems in a more dynamic vertical take off flight mode. I am not saying the economics will work, or that it could be made afford
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There were several problems with the Harrier. Most crashes occurred during the transition from vertical to horizontal flight, as the vents pivoted. A quadcopter drone doesn't have that problem, since the thrusters don't pivot. The Harrier crashes were also way more common with newbie pilots. A quadcopter doesn't have that problem either, since there is no pilot.
The Harrier problem was fixed with more powerful engines (AV-8B replacing AV8-A), and better pilot training. Newbie pilots were assigned to F18
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Maybe they can use the Moller Skycar...;-)
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It's always 5 to 10 years away from release :)
VTOL planes a/k/a Widowmakers (Score:4, Insightful)
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The Osprey is perfectly safe these days. The testing period had a high number of fatal crashes, but the expensive lessons learned were put to good use and as a result Its the safest rotocraft in the marine corp fleet.
Re:VTOL planes a/k/a Widowmakers (Score:4, Insightful)
I supposed personal computers will never work out because, who can afford to power all those vacuum tubes.
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We have perfectly good helicopters today, but you don't want one on your street. Just a few basic physical problems that won't be solved without antigravity.
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Seriously, slashdot mods, this is not insightful. Glib comparisons to completely unrelated tech at a different stage of development is utterly meaningless.
If you were comparing predictions in the 1910s about planes to ones in 1950s about computers, perhaps you'd be on to something. But aircraft have had over 100 years of development time now and while there are still advances to be made, they're all going to be relatively slow and incremental because the technology is mature.
The problem is you can't escape
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Not all multi-rotors are plagued with the Osprey's woes.
An Uber multi-rotor would still need designated landing zones, guaranteed to be clear from people that can get hurt by a landing chop-o-matic. Especially so given its limited range and hover time.
It would be noisy as hell - very few neighbors would put up with a new Uber LZ next door, limiting it to mostly already designated heliports - not exactly numerous or conveniently located.
It's either going to be limited to flight in very favorable conditions,
Uber can try to shift liability to the end user (Score:2)
Uber can try to shift liability to the end user
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While I agree that consume VTOL is unlikely in the foreseeable future, I have two points
1. The Harrier worked fine, it was not particularly more dangerous for its pilot than other aircraft in those roles.
2. We have a bunch of working miracle cancer cures. The trick to cancer is that it's a type of thing, not a thing. A "cancer cure" doesn't cure all cancer, any more than a "house fire" burns down all houses.
I've actually had a very old fashioned cancer cure. I had Hodgkins Disease which is a cancer of the l
Unfortunately, that is how you learn (Score:2)
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There's a reason that both the Harrier and Osprey are called the Widowmaker.
I've heard that about the Osprey, but not the Harrier.
I doubt a commercial VTOL Uber plane will be a reality in my lifetime due to liability concerns.
Why not? People can use helicopters in cities, and they're dangerous as heck.
"self-driving" (Score:2)
LMFTFY (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Just as soon as the Moller Skycar [wikipedia.org] is ready. It'll be real soon now, right? He's only been working on it for about 50 years.
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Just as soon as the Moller Skycar [wikipedia.org] is ready. It'll be real soon now, right? He's only been working on it for about 50 years.
Moller ran up against the problem of not wanting to get test pilots killed, and the FAA not wanting to get test pilots killed... but strap in a lightweight laptop that can autonomously stabilize the vehicle during testing while you have a pilot on the ground directing it where to go and you should be able to make faster progress than Moller ever could with periodic tethered flights from a crane and a human test pilot.
Re: LMFTFY (Score:2)
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Muller has had computers he could fly since 1980.
Even the low powered mobile/embedded computers we had from ten years ago were not really fast enough to incorporate a lot of sensor data and perform extensive autonomous functions. We aren't talking about the small rack of computers you could put on a jumbo jet, or even in a car, or the small embedded computers you would put on a missile that could incorporate one sensor or two with simple instructions. What we have now is a capability to have small embedded or low power computers that can have millions of
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Have you seen how your average taxi driver drives around cities?
I can just see how their flying will be.
Like this [break.com]?
Aircars... (Score:2)
Maybe Uber should partner with Moller. That should put them out of business in no time. Even in the age of "drones" and "autonomous cars", Moller still hasn't been able to put together a demonstration model that works for more than a few minutes. And 5 minutes of flight time doesn't really get you anywhere.
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Moller still hasn't been able to put together a demonstration model
Why in the bloody 'ell would he want to do that? Working vehicles are for one market; fantasies are for another. He's built a fifty year career on this one, and never had to spend a nickel on anything but hype.
Moller knows exactly what he's doing.
Noise ? (Score:2)
Uber advertising itself (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Punny (Score:1)
Seems to me like Lyft is really missing out on an easy marketing campaign here.
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Well Über is German for "Above/Over", so works pretty well for flying cars too. I wonder if the flying car ubers will be known as "Über ubers".
More silent? (Score:3)
More silent? How can they be more silent? Silent means they make no noise.
That said, VTOL aircraft are far, far from quiet. Even if you made them battery powered (good luck with that, as the power densities required are really pretty serious) to eliminate most of the power plant noise, they would still be damned loud due to the massive amount of air that needs to be thrust downward in order to move the craft upward. How much air? Equivalent to the weight of the craft. All the time. More, if you want to move up. Given that air is substantially less dense that most flying crafts, this means heaploads of noise. No matter how you cut it, aircraft are loud, close up, as long as you are depending on displacing air to provide thrust.
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Yeah, I suspect their VTOL vehicles are based on up-sized quadrocopter drones, which might make sense for safety, environment, and cost. They won't be as loud as a helicopter, but they will be far louder than your handheld drone (which are far from silent) due to size. Probably will be quieter than the mutilated Mustang my neighbor drives though and not the loudest vehicle around.
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Why do you think they won't be as loud as a helicopter? Fewer smaller rotors are louder than a single larger rotor pushing the same amount of air. The amount of weight is going to be approximately the same (or are these air taxis relying on a technological breakthrough that the helicopter industry hasn't yet found?), so the amount of lift required is going to be the same, thus the amount of displaced air per unit time will be the same. Many smaller rotors will need to spin faster and be louder than a sin
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Motors in general are a lot quieter than engines.
2017, Year of (Score:1)
Uber thinking out loud... (Score:1)
NASA Puffin project (Score:1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Not, "Can this work?" It's, "WHERE can this work?" (Score:2)
There's already infrastructure in place for VTOL aircraft in cities: Helipads on rooftops. Hospitals have them.
Cost isn't (as much of) an issue for Uber. They don't do sales, they do for-hire.
If someone could plug into the existing Uber app and provide another selection to the right for "VTOL", you think they wouldn't do brisk business in New York? Hell, shuttle service from downtown to the airports alone would more than pay for it.
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Through a number of phases of the modern age, different airlines have attempted to offer air-taxi services from the three main airports around NYC to Manhattan. The economics would seem to make sense at first blush. The relative distances, potential market demand and locations make sense. And, yet none of the big airlines still offer these ad-ons to their mainline service, while, at the same time, they have offered significant incentives to attract big-money customers. The natural conclusion is that the
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I don't feel like loading their wix-laden website, but there's a company called gotham air that planned to offer $99 air taxi service from manhattan to the airport. No idea if that ever materialized, or if it (dun dun dun) crashed and burned.
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Helicopters are a general-purpose aircraft. If you only needed 50 mile range you could probably make a purpose-built hybrid-powered shuttle with better economics than a chopper. And the generation growing up today will be used to the idea of drone quads. This could be a thing in my lifetime ... though I won't be investing in it just yet.
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three main airports around NYC to Manhattan.
I'm thinking of back in the days they had civilian Chinook helicopters providing service to and from the Pan Am building, at least what I remember seeing in the 1960s Clint Eastwood movie "Coogan's Bluff." I always thought that would be cool to take off and land on top of that building. Maybe it just doesn't financially work out (Pan Am no longer exists, and I've not seen that model of helicopter used for passenger service). I was in NYC in 1990s, landed at JFK, got on shuttle bus to downtown hotel and acc
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See Die Hard for how they get around fast.
Rich people toy at best due to energy costs (Score:3)
This is one of those things that will remain a rich people toy at best for the foreseeable future simply due to the amount of energy required. See also: Civilian supersonic flight, space tourism.
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No you're just making that up. The energy to run a horseless carriage wasn't unprecedented: it was about the same needed to run a conventional carriage. You're correct that a manufacturing line and economies of scale were the major factor in making cars affordable though, because the cost of manufacture was what made cars rich people toys for over a hundred years before the model A came out, not energy costs.
Insurance Liability (Score:2)
The insurance liability for something like this would be astronomical. We already have roads and understand and accept the risks associated with them. With this you have the risk of running into buildings, trees, power lines, etc. Roads are at least well-defined travel ways, the sky not so much. Then you have the risks of falling out of the sky & damaging things below - and the occupants are pretty well dead, so add a few million for them.
Even if fuel & vehicle costs were negligible I could easily s
Too much money... (Score:3, Informative)
They have no clue what they're doing and this pie-in-the-sky stuff is just a bullshit distraction before the money runs out.
I don't know why companies aren't happy to just perfect and run an existing product profitably instead of looking for endless and everlasting growth? It's not sustainable. After all, why shouldn't they when there are investors willing to sign $1.5B cheques for a fucking app.
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I'm glad they're employing smart people on pie in the sky stuff instead of making a profit. They'd eventually fail anyway, might as well do something interesting first.
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I'm glad they're employing smart people on pie in the sky stuff instead of making a profit. They'd eventually fail anyway, might as well do something interesting first.
I guess that's the silver lining. Maybe we'll see a bunch of new startups sprout up out of that Uber experience.
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I'm glad they're employing smart people on pie in the sky stuff instead of making a profit. They'd eventually fail anyway, might as well do something interesting first.
Like most Ponzi schemes, this is about diverting as many liquid assets as they can into the places where they can only be touched by the owners rather than trying to turn a profit.
Uber was never meant to be a success, it was meant to make its owners rich from other people's money.
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Uber is trying desperately to use up all that money they were given based on their (relatively simple) app. An app that they can't even make profitable. Apparently they lost around $1.2B in the first half of the year.
If they don't use it up, there's a risk they might eventually be asked to give it back.
Terrorist opportunity (Score:2)
An automated flying vehicle will require much more communication with the ground/other flying objects than an automated car.
The more communication a vehicle has to make, the more there is opportunity for hacking. I hope security is really tight on these things so we don't see them all hacked by terrorists to fly into the freedom tower... or even by pranksters sending everyone to Cleveland.
/ honey, I swear I didn't instruct my uber to send me to the strip club, a prankster hacked my drone.
Shark officially jumped (Score:1)
Someone please put Uber (and Lyft, and whoever else) out of bus
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I'm not sure if it will be harder or easier to make a self-driving drone.
You have an extra dimension that needs to be scanned for threats, but there are no traffic lights, much fewer human pilots (especially lower altitude), no pedestrians, no traffic signs, no streets to follow.
Overall there are a lot fewer rules that need to be considered than there are for cars. Consequences for getting things wrong are more dire- but it might be more practical to pull off than a self-driving car... at least until they
Good luck with that. (Score:2)
I for one wouldn't get into a self-driving uber let alone a self-flying one.
30 seconds fly time, many hours to recharge (Score:1)
Ehang (Score:2)
Perhaps something like the Ehang 184 [theverge.com] all electric autonomous quadcopter scaled up from a drone so that it's large enough to carry a single passenger up to 10 miles or roughly 23 minutes of flight. I bet this meets the needs of many Uber trips!
Finally, progress (Score:2)
And you can't really make a traditional helicopter cheaper, you have lots of expensive parts because a failure of any of them will cause lithobraking followed by rapid unplanned disassembly. And they can't experiment with multi-rotor systems because the weight of mechanical transmission is prohibitive.
Fortunately, we now have powerful batteries and electric motors. Creat
Important research (Score:2)
So, about those regulations... (Score:1)
This should work out well for them. The FAA has a great sense of humor, and are well known for letting little things slide. I'm sure they'll have no problem with unpiloted human carrying drones from a company with a great history of regulatory compliance operating in restricted airspaces for commercial purposes.