The first taxi drone
Yesterday, on the news, I saw a report on the first drone that knows how to transport a passenger, a kind of drone taxi.
It's called EHang 184 and its purpose is to be a personal and autonomous taxi.
In addition to being able to move quickly and be fully electric, the vehicle requires no knowledge of driving.
While Airbus has just made the air baptism of his drone taxi Vahana, the Chinese Ehang seems already much more advanced in the development of his device. The company made a video report showing its quadrotor drone Ehang 184 performing its first tests with passengers. Engineers but also representatives of the Chinese government and the deputy mayor of Guangzhou City took a seat on board. In all, about forty people have already flown in this taxi drone.
Ehang also built a two-seat model with eight electric rotors that carried two passengers for a total of 280 kg.
The company says it has already done more than a thousand test flights of its drone taxi. It can fly at a maximum speed of 130 km / h for 25 minutes.
It will be able to fly autonomously and to perform urban transport over short distances.
The drone can climb up to 300 meters above sea level, fly 15 km, face a force 7 wind, fog, and fly at night.
The drone taxi Ehang 184 will fly this summer in Dubai. Indeed, the city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates intends to launch the first transport service by drone this summer. It has teamed up with the Chinese manufacturer Ehang who has designed a quadrotor capable of taking a passenger on intercity journeys not exceeding 50 kilometers.
Dubai, the largest city in the United Arab Emirates, seems determined to put itself at the forefront of urban transport. Recently, an agreement was reached with Hyperloop One, one of four companies working to make the subsonic train project a reality.
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The objective is to study the possibility of creating a Hyperloop line connecting the city to the capital Abu Dhabi in 12 minutes against about two hours by road. But Dubai is also interested in the air way, and more particularly to taxi drones.
The Ehang 184 is a quadrotor drone that can carry a passenger and a lightweight luggage, 100 kg in total, flying up to 500 meters altitude and up to 100 km / h for a journey that does not exceed 50 kilometers.
Totally autonomous, this drone taxi is devoid of flight instruments. The customer orders his race via an application on his smartphone. Once on board, he indicates his destination using the touch pad in front of him and that's it. The drone takes off towards its destination, followed by a control center on the ground with which it communicates via a 4G link.
The chauffeur-driven transport vehicle service Uber recently revealed that he was working on a taxi drone project. Airbus has created a division called Urban Mobility and hopes to present a first prototype capable of carrying a person by the end of the year.
However, between the technical obstacles, the need to adapt the air regulations to allow the circulation of this type of flying machine and the security issues, many think that it would be necessary to count still at least a decade before seeing flying this kind of taxis.
However, Ehang intends to market its taxi drone in 2017. If successful, the experiment that will be conducted in Dubai could play a role of accelerator in the development of this mode of transport.
The taxi drone project of the Chinese company Ehang has just been approved by the North American authorities to carry out tests in the State of Nevada. The goal is to obtain a certificate of airworthiness. Without manual controls, the device can carry a passenger on a journey not exceeding 23 minutes.
Here's how things could go from here say 15-20 years. It's eight o'clock in the morning and you're late for work. It is rush hour, the traffic is dense and you doubt to arrive in time by taking the public transport. Far from giving in to stress, you take out your smartphone and order a taxi drone. A few minutes later, it arrives by air in front of your home. You just have to board and indicate your destination on the touch pad. The craft takes off and takes you to safe harbor avoiding obstacles in its path, just great!
The Chinese company, which markets recreational drones, believes that its solution is eco-responsible and ideal on small and medium distances. She reassured the concern by explaining that if any component disconnects or fails, the aircraft will immediately land in the closest possible area without damage to the drone and its passenger.
It makes me think back to the future when Marty is in the future, we see flying taxis, o) The creators of this trilogy still had a lot of imagination and all they invented for this film start slowly to appear, the overboard, the flying taxis, the connected shoes, ...
