Uber unveils a prototype of its flying taxi for its future UberAIR service

The roads are not enough anymore. The Californian start-up has decided to launch an onslaught of the skies and intends to propose in five years an air taxi service.

On the occasion of its second annual Uber Elevate summit, the start-up returned to UberAIR, its flying taxi service on which it had already lifted the veil last November.

A giant drone and dedicated towers

According to CNBC, this was an opportunity to demonstrate a taxi prototype. In this case, glimpsed at the end of last year in a video, the device looks more like a giant electric drone whose autonomy is not known for the moment.
Equipped with a cabin that can accommodate four passengers, it flies with four rotors with two propellers each, arranged on the wings of this aircraft and helicopter crossover. The greater number of rotors should also make it safer than a conventional helicopter, says Uber.
It will also be quieter and should produce the sound of a truck passing near a house, says Uber. A detail that is important for a means of urban transport.
Each drone will fly between 240 and 320 km / h at an altitude ranging between 300 and 600 meters, high enough to see the traffic jams and not too much trouble residents, perhaps.
The taxi will take off from "Skyports", vertical structures designed specifically for this purpose that will handle up to 200 landings and take-offs per hour, one every 24 seconds. They will also help keep flight noise away from the ground.

Not so expensive

As we said last November, these taxis will not be limited to a wealthy public. The American company also indicates that it considers that the cost should be identical, for the same distance, to a race in Uber Black at the start. Once the service has enough customers, prices should fall and match those of a UberX race.

UberAIR will be tested in Dallas and Los Angeles in 2020. If all goes as planned and the partnership with NASA is bearing fruit, the commercial service should not be launched until 2023.

Is there a pilot on the plane ?

Initially, the drone will be piloted by a human. But Uber's ambition is to switch to autonomous flight, controlled by a computer and an AI. A strategy that raises the question of the path and technological progress to be made.
Last March, an autonomous Uber car made history by killing the first human, a young woman who was crossing a road while pushing her bicycle. The internal investigation told us yesterday that the car had detected "the obstacle" but that the driving algorithm had decided not to take into account ...
An unmanned flying cab would not face this kind of problem, but Uber will have to reassure users by then. The task will be all the more difficult as competition in this sector is important.
Giants like Airbus are present in this sector. Other tech players are also interested in the potential of flying vehicles. Thus, Larry Page, co-founder and boss of Alphabet / Google, has been financing for a few years now a company whose goal is to produce "flying cars".

Source:
CNBC

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