Airbus Is About To Build A Self-Flying Electric Robo-Taxi

Airbus said today it is building a prototype of an electric self-flying plane for a single passenger, which it is calling the Vahana. The autonomous plane can fly a single passenger on trips of around 50 miles. From a report on FastCompany: Airbus teased two possibilities for the Vahana on December 14: an electric helicopter and a plane with wings that tilt up to enable vertical take off and landing, or VTOL. After its engineers ran the numbers on both types, Airbus today announced that it's building a prototype of the sci-fi looking tilt-wing plane, which will begin test flights before the end of the year. "The vehicle is being built. Parts are being made as we speak," says Airbus chief engineer Geoffrey Bower. The company's goal is to get air taxis in service in about 10 years, possibly partnering with ride-hailing companies like Uber. "We would love to see what that kind of partnership might evolve into," says Maryanna Saenko of Airbus Ventures.

A bet between

[Tablizer]

practical mass flying cars and general-purpose maid robots (Rosie-style)?

Which do you think will be first, and why?

Re:

[turkeydance]

cars. more money faster.

Poor Moller

[sycodon]

This guy [moller.com] couldn't catch a break after decades of trying to raise capital and build a flying car.

Suddenly, a bunch of dot.com billionaires are building them right and left.

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

This guy [moller.com] couldn't catch a break after decades of trying to raise capital and build a flying car.

That is because he is doing it wrong. His "flying car" is really a drivable airplane. The best it can do is go from airport-to-airport, and then drive from there. You could achieve the same result, cheaper and safer, by just renting a car at the arrival airport, or (even easier) taking Uber to your final destination.

The billionaires are more sensible. Quadcopters are clearly a better technology for this application. They can fly city-center-to-city-center, and you won't need a pilot's license to fly in

Re:

[sims 2]

Flying cars
Unless you count Alaska they already have flying cars although I think they just call them planes.

The flying car could be a big thing if it was all automated but I dont think that will happen until well after we have self driving cars.

As for maids I think that's a while off yet they just unveiled a robot that could fold clothes a couple years ago the roomba can do carpet ok but afaik there is no GP robot even in the works that could do as much as dust a innovation in robotics trophy collection.

Ca

Meanwhile Airbus shareholders

[Anonymous Coward]

are about to file a lawsuit for stupid ideas that the company leadership seems to want to pursue even in the face of all common sense.

Re:Meanwhile Airbus shareholders

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> file a lawsuit for stupid ideas

This one actually makes a bit of strategic sense. Re-read this last line: "(Airbus's stated goal) is to get air taxis in service in about 10 years, possibly partnering with ride-hailing companies like Uber." In other words, what Airbus is trying to do is find a rich and somewhat gullible company that's ready to invest in silly ideas that will generate lots of press, and they are hoping Uber will bite on the vaporware (as many governments do today). Airbus never actually has to produce anything - remember that defense contractors already know how to play a 10-year tease - but their shareholders would benefits from a nice infusion of the targeted mark's cash.

Re:

[Tobenisstinky]

Yup. They would have to get into the real estate business too, so these things have somewhere to land. My first thought was 50 miles, woopie-doo. You would probably end up driving more than that to get to your destination between getting to and from places these things could land.

Re:

[AK Marc]

My nearest municipal airstrip is 5 miles, then less than 50 to the international airport. Flying over all the traffic to make that trip would be great. The air taxi services in NYC are often quite busy. Manhattan to JFK/LGA is slow by car, and many executives take air taxi, which isn't much more than a ground taxi, but much faster. Get the air taxi price to the same as a ground taxi, and you'll have a stream of these things flying from Manhattan to the airports.

Home to work is unlikely, as most places

I'm a bit suspicious

[Lucas123]

Is it just me, or does that "flying taxi" look an awful lot like Skynet's Hunter Killer drone.

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

neeerrrrrrddddddddddddddddddddddddd

Good design

[Billy the Mountain]

I'm not an aviation professional but I think about designs for these all the time. I'd be proud of this design:

• Simple, inexpensive propellers rather than one or two massive, complex rotor(s)
• Wings so when traveling place to place you don't have to expend extra energy to stay aloft
• Electric. You'll need a fantastic battery, but if that's not quite available you can use a gas turbine powering a generator for hybrid operation

My only quibble is the design relies on differential torque of the propellers for pivot rotation. I think it would be better to arrange for thrust vectoring for this. Also thrust vectoring would allow you to run identical propellers because the thrust vectoring can eliminate the torque.

Re:Good design

[ASDFnz]

My only quibble is the design relies on differential torque of the propellers for pivot rotation. I think it would be better to arrange for thrust vectoring for this. Also thrust vectoring would allow you to run identical propellers because the thrust vectoring can eliminate the torque.

Differential torque is far more efficient than thrust vectoring. To alter your angle of trust you need a minimum of one extra motor that does nothing but provide the function (and weight, and battery draw).

Since your props are already spinning in a counter rotation function (to stop it taking off like a spinning top) the extra function of providing yaw is just about free in terms of weight and battery life.

Re:

[Bruce Perens]

Well, I'm not an aviation professional either, and that might be the problem. Non-aviation-professionals underestimate all of the issues in making this work. Hey, we sent a man to the moon, right? How difficult could it be to make a flying car?

I would have been less sarcastic if they had shown an operating prototype rather than a 3D rendering. A 3D rendering means they haven't started to see if they can really address all of the issues.

Oh, and Moller [moller.com] is about to make their version, too! Since about 1950.

Re:

[fustakrakich]

Good design? HA! Wait till you hear it

Re:

[Obfuscant]

Simple, inexpensive propellers rather than one or two massive, complex rotor(s)

Inexpensive enough and still sturdy enough to be safe?

An issue with using quad copters as a model is the problem of scaling up. Changing lift to create directionality and stability requires either 1) changing pitch, which makes for horribly expensive, failure-prone rotors like current helicopters have, or 2) change in rotational velocity, which means your engine has to provide enough torque to overcome inertia and change rotational speeds quickly enough to maintain control.

This is why fixed wing aircraft

Re:

[Obfuscant]

Yeah, this old argument again.

Engine power controls thrust. Pitch changes the angle of attack. The lift equation depends on terms of velocity and coefficient of lift. The velocity is a complex function of thrust and drag; coefficient of lift varies linearly with angle of attach (pitch).

Trying to isolate the factors is fine for a schoolbook discussion of flying, but in real aircraft real pilots control both power and pitch to achieve the desired climb or descent at the desired airspeed. Yes, they may have

Hindu Helicopter

[turkeydance]

reincarnated

If it's not Boeing, I'm not going

[Joe_Dragon]

At least airbus knows how to pass an FAA code audit but uber?

Re:

[HornWumpus]

There have been several commercial attempts at flying cars.

They fail because they are bad, crazy expensive, cars _and_ bad, terribly performing, airplanes. The problem is the definition of 'flying car' is nebulous. A helicopter is, in a sense, a flying car.

Making something that's both road and air worthy and not more expensive than an airplane/helicopter and two or three cars is a big challenge. Could be impossible.

If by 'flying car' they mean 'vertical takeoff air vehicle' that's a helicopter.

Airbus has been doing this since the early 90s

[Anonymous Coward]

All their airplanes are self-flying robo-taxis.

Thats why i refuse to fly in them.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't care about the fact that Airbus has the best safety record of the major aircraft manufacturers?

Rotary wings are not very energy efficient.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

[I am leaving auto gyros out, though they are technically rotary wing a/c]

In fixed wing aircraft the thrust from the jet or propeller equals the drag, and the lift produced by the wings. The lift to drag ratio for most aircraft will exceed 10. Thus the plane needs to produce one tenth of its weight as thrust. There are specialized aircraft gliders/sailplanes etc that can push this ratio up to 20. I vaguely recall something called Eppler airfoil that has a lift/drag ratio of 40 for a narrow range of Reynolds number.

But a helicoper needs to produce thrust equal to weight. Thus it can hover and take off and land vertically. But it consumes a lot more fuel than fixed wing aircraft. So much so that it is uneconomical even to serve as air taxis between a metro hub and the suburban airport.

People with deep pockets, military, has been trying various formats to get vertical take off and fixed wing efficiency. The tilt wing aircraft like the Osprey (C22?) have lots of stability issues during the transition. Vectored thrust aircraft like Harrier also suffers from fuel efficiency issues. I do not see how changing the energy source from combustion to electro chemistry is going the change the physics of the problem.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Go buy yourself a $20 quadcopter and fly it until you get board. Then ask yourself why it's more suited to flying in confined spaces than a much more efficient RC aircraft (of any size). Ask yourself how you're able to fly this $20 quadcopter with no experience, yet can't keep a $200 RC aircraft from fatally smashing into the ground everytime you give it the wrong stick movement. Then ask yourself why you didn't get into RC more when you were younger.

Different aircraft have different roles. Trade-offs a

Re:

[HornWumpus]

Then buy a Slow Stick with a modern gyro stabilized receiver and realize that RC aircraft (at the easy end of the market) are just as easy to fly and crash resilient as quads, and a whole lot more fun and versatile.

Adding FPV is similar. Save you from having to learn all the mental control reversals for orientation of the aircraft.

Quads have lots of uses and are cool to play with, but right now they are having a 'late 1970s CB radio' phase.

Re:

[AK Marc]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Rotary with a theoretical efficiency of a fixed wing. It does both. It has a propeller like a plane, in the tail. Wings on the side, and a top rotor for VTOL. The helicopter doesn't need that much lift for level flight, if you give it wings. It'd be interesting to have the helicopter go from "helicopter" mode to "auto gyro" mode then to "fixed wing" mode as you transition from rotor to level flight. The rotor can continue to turn, so long as the wingtips don't break

Re:

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Once you size the powerplant big enough to produce X amount of power/thrust, it consumes more energy even when you run it at 10% of maximum thrust.

Now I have to take back this statement:

I do not see how changing the energy source from combustion to electro chemistry is going the change the physics of the problem.

Now I see how. Electric motors are very efficient. A 100kW gas turbine running at 10 kW would still consume too much fuel compared a gas turbine rated just for 10kW. But a 100 kW electric motor would still be as efficient at 10 kW or at least could be made that much efficient. Further electric motors are very compact, it m

Re:

[AK Marc]

That's exactly where I was headed. The difference between a 100 kW electric motor and a 10 kW electric motor, both putting out 10 kW is weight, not efficiency.

Though, the same can be said for gasoline engines, tuned well (though Diesel beat gasoline at that, it's the applications, not technology, that determined that). The internal resistance of swept area being 10x will add friction, but not enough to make the efficiency differences people assume. Throttling (wastes engine power/efficiency turning the

Re:Rotary wings are not very energy efficient.

[joe_frisch]

Agreed. Hovering requires thrust > weight. Power goes as mass/time * velocity^2, while thrust goes as mass/times * velocity. So to have efficient thrust for lift you need to move a lot of air slowly, not a little air quickly. This is why helicopters have enormous swept disk areas. Any design that uses less area will be less efficient than a helicopter - already a very inefficient device.

Less efficiency means less range (already a problem with an electric), heavier motors and batteries, AND more noise and down-wash damage.

Tilt rotor sounds great, but adds a lot of additional weight and complexity on an already very marginal system. It allows high cruise speeds, but it takes time to climb and accelerate / decelerate, while navigating crowded airspace. Cruise speed tends to be an issue mostly on much longer trips than 50 miles.

So, how is this better than a single person helicopter?

Then, even if it works, where can it be used? No way noise ordinances will let someone use it from their back yard or city street At least in the US aircraft need to carry a half hour of spare fuel for safety. There are air traffic control issues if there are more than a few of these.

I just don't see a use case that wouldn't be better served with a conventional (but autopilot controlled) helicopter.

Looks like marketing silliness to me. I'll believe it when I see a working prototype

Re:

[Cyberax]

Yeah, so you build a craft with rotating wings that takes off vertically and then transition into regular airfoils. Electric motors are ridiculously powerful so it's not a problem at all to provide peak thrust for takeoff, they just need enough electric power.

The problem is the amount of energy available. This can be overcome with hybrid designs and theoretically there are engines that are lightweight enough to (at least) provide enough power for the horizontal flight. It's around 40kW for Cessna 172, pro

I for one welcome our new Robo-Taxi overlords

[Anonymous Coward]

Robo-Taxis today. Cylons tomorrow.

Re:

[hey!]

I don't get why it should be self-flying. Why not teach the robots to fly the taxi? And why do robots need taxis to begin with?

Re:

[HornWumpus]

PHB is that you?

Everything you don't understand is NOT easy.

The Word From Marketing

[Bruce Perens]

The Word from Management is that we have to do something innovative, or we're out of all of those subsidies! Our countries are looking at all of that Musk stuff: electric cars, rockets that land and can be reused. We need to do something different! But not more electric cars or rockets that can be reused, we can't do the same different. We need different different! So, Marketing says Flying Cars! After all, haven't you heard people asking, since the 1950's, Where Are Our Flying Cars?, Well, we're going to have the answer! Here are your flying cars! We have a great 3D rendering of them! Now, half of the people can't tell 3D renderings from the real thing, and Engineering has to make it work now, so we're off the hook and it's more subsidies for everyone this year! Of course, Engineering had better make it work, or they're out!

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Now, half of the people can't tell 3D renderings from the real thing

Isn't that their purpose? (The renderings', not the people...)

Uber application.

[mykepredko]

This seems to be a perfect product for the Uber app, I wouldn't expect it would go directly to an address/intersection, but maybe to a local "parking lot" that is convenient to where it is/where it's going.

Re:Uber application.

[BiggerIsBetter]

This seems to be a perfect product for the Uber app...

No, I think Lyft would be a better fit for this one.

Passenger safety systems?

[Rick Schumann]

What I'd want to see is what sort of passenger safety systems are designed into it. Ejection seat, or ballistic parachute for the whole aircraft, maybe? How do you ensure that the passenger can survive a catastropic failure of the aircraft, or be able to exit the aircraft safely in case of an imminent collision (with another aircraft or with a stationary object)? If it were up to me to certify an aircraft that is purpose-built to not have a human pilot, that would be a critical requirement.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

What I'd want to see is what sort of passenger safety systems are designed into it. Ejection seat, or ballistic parachute for the whole aircraft, maybe?

It will almost certainly be a parachute for the full aircraft. It would not be wholly surprising, though, if they also had an ejection seat.

Re:

[speedplane]

How do you ensure that the passenger can survive a catastropic failure of the aircraft, or be able to exit the aircraft safely in case of an imminent collision (with another aircraft or with a stationary object)?

Force-field, duh. Don't you know anything about futuristic speculative technology?

Re:

[Rick Schumann]

Oh, come on, 'force fields' are so Last Thursday. How about a stasis field? Time stops within the field while it's turned on. Rescuers remove you, stasis field and all, from the wreckage, get you to safety, then turn the field off. Theoretically you could survive a supernova exploding without so much as a scratch. Also works well for misbehaving children; don't have time to deal with them? Stick 'em in a stasis box until you do! Same thing works for unruly pets, unexpected guests, and inlaws, especially mot

Safe for kids and dogs

[Macdude]

It has eight unshielded propellers, how safe is it going to be for the neighbourhood kids and dogs when I land in front of my house?

Re:

[fustakrakich]

The racket will disperse the crowd. If not that, how about a bucket of prop wash? You'll have to land the thing on top of your house.

They want to build autonomous drones

[prefec2]

This goes in the direction of autonomous drones which do not need a pilot controlling them (that much). They can then carry a 100 kg (220,462 pound) load 80 km (50 miles) which allows to provide supplies to troops or deliver bombs to certain areas even in cities.

I can hear it now... (Preflight breifing..)

[Anonymous Coward]

"As you can see that there is no pilot or crew aboard your new AirTaxi so pay attention to the screen in front of you for some important safety information" says a computerized voice...

(A video plays of the customary, how to fasten your seat belt, where the exits are and how to use the oxygen masks etc. ....) The video over, the computerized voice continues:

We are ready for departure ladies and gentleman, so please put your tray tables and seatbacks to their upright and locked position and make sure all y

This is one helluva leaf blower

[fustakrakich]

The noise will be impressive.

Start by flying these with no passengers

[Applehu Akbar]

A logical first application for this tech would be light, high-value local freight. Imagine delivering deli and fresh seafood to the roofs of restaurants, delivering medical supplies to hospitals, electronics tech and components to businesses, and legal documents to courthouses. Such a delivery network could fan out from big-city airports.

After a few years of safe operation, high end passengers will start volunteering for rides, replacing expensive services like this one:
https://www.newyorkhelicopter.... [newyorkhelicopter.com]

Uber partnership

[manu0601]

goal is to get air taxis in service in about 10 years, possibly partnering with ride-hailing companies like Uber

Too bad Uber will not be there in 10 years. Remember it never made any benefit...

Re:

[speedplane]

Too bad Uber will not be there in 10 years. Remember it never made any benefit...

Don't you read Uber press releases? In 10 years, we won't have cars and everything will be uber.

The correct Sanskrit word should be Vimana

[louzer]

The correct Sanskrit word should be Vimana. Vahana means vehicle. Vimana means flying chariot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]