Dubai Looks To Introduce A Fleet of Taxi Drones
It's been in the work for some time but it looks like you might soon start to see passenger-drones flying around Dubai. The vehicles can go about 160km an hour and they can fly for a range of roughly 50km. Many might remember seeing the single-rider quadcopter when it was unveiled at CES 2016.
The Ehang 184 it's called, and it's already been traveling around Dubai and experimented with flying with passengers through the skies.
The drone will be able to communicate with a 4G wireless network located on the ground and the passenger will only be required to punch in their address or destination of where they are going, buckle-up, and then sit back and wait for the drone to deliver them.
Dubai is the first city in the world to unveil passenger-flying drones. But they aren't the only ones looking at this option, as developers in the US and other areas are also looking at this possibility. It might not be many more years before we see passenger drones and flying cars frequenting the skies.
It's alleged that Dubai has some big travel plans for the future. Apparently, by 2030 they hope that at least a quarter of all the travel in that region, will be done in an autonomous fashion.
The drones are expected to be manufactured by Ehang, which is a Chinese drone-making firm. And the drones will also be able to carry up to 220 lbs at a time. We could see them start to be used publicly within just a few months time.
Pics:
STRINGER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Pixabay
Sources:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2017/02/14/dubai-autonomous-taxi-drones-ehang/#138fc0ea6da3
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/passenger-carrying-drone-dubai-1.3982499
https://www.engadget.com/2017/02/13/ehang-184-passenger-drones-dubai/
https://steemit.com/technology/@doitvoluntarily/uber-proposes-jetsons-like-network-of-flying-cars
That is wicked and can't wait to see the results of this project. do you happen to know whether the drones are powered by oil or electricity using rechargeable batteries? thanks for sharing what used to be a futuristic idea! I just can't help but thinking about Star Wars drones when I read this.
Namaste :)
I happen to know it's electric/rechargeable batteries. I saw the EHang at CES, and wrote about it here:
The EHang 184 Autonomous Aerial Vehicle...🚀
That is just all kinds of awesome! I wonder, though: surely there must be some kind of manual control in case of emergencies, and would people thus be required to take flight training before using one? Would you need some kind of "drone license"? I can't imagine just blindly trusting my life to one of those things. That said, stuff like this probably is the wave of the future.
Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.
Agreed, @cryptomancer 😬
I'll be quite happy to let other folks beta-test flying around in autonomous robots... 😉
I am curious to see whether this will go, adopted worldwide or not :)
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