18 thoughts on “The Sky Isn’t the Limit: The Rise of Autonomous Air Taxis”

1. The air taxi idea is very interesting. There could be some major benefits to this, however there are some major reasons as to why this idea could fail. First, these taxis must be significantly more expensive than a traditional taxi service, uber or lyft. Additionally, how far would these taxis be able to travel. If I am traveling somewhere 5 minutes away, I am not going to pay a lot more because I could just call an uber. If It is able to fly significant distances, then it becomes an option. However, if it flies a significant distance it will bring to question as to how planes will interact with these flying drones. I think that finding a market for people to use these air taxis in the United States is going to be very difficult. Unless the price point is low enough to where the average American will use the taxi, I cannot see people using them. Here is an article explaining why air taxis probably will never be a success.

   http://gawker.com/5092561/why-air-taxis-failed-to-take-off

2. I would trust an air taxi, however, I can guarantee I will not spend extra money for it over a cheaper alternative regardless of the time. If an uber took an extra 10 minutes I would simply work on emails or figure out something else to take up my time rather than spend the extra money for a quicker ride. This seems like a luxury for the 1%. 95% of people will not choose to use this because the cost greatly outweighs the benefits. Prime example is that they are testing it in Dubai where the richest people in the world travel and live. Interesting concept, but I just cant get behind it for short travel time. I would rather spend my money on a completely hydrogen powered uber-like car-taxi company which will be safer than flying in an unmanned air taxi. Great article though!

3. I think the idea of an air taxi is just a new version of the “flying car”. Its something that seems futuristic and even realistic but my guess is that it will take much longer to become a real thing than people think. Think of the safety aspect. Whether or not it is safer then a manned aircraft or not people do not like the idea of a computer having control of their lives. It is the same reason why the autonomous car is slow to develop.

   I do believe however electric planes will become a larger talking point in the future. With plane tickets and oil becoming more and more expensive an electric, plane could drastically reduce the price of plane tickets. Boeing is making the Boeing 787 Dreamliner which although is not electric gets incredible gas millage and can travel or up to 15 hours without filling up. New plane technology is not something we have seen much of recently however I think it will happen soon. https://www.cnet.com/news/15-hours-on-a-boeing-787-dreamliner-in-coach/

4. I think autonomous air taxis are definitely in the realm of possibility. We are already well on our way to fully establishing autonomous cars. The invention of autonomous air taxis wouldn’t exist though until fully autonomous cars have been created. However, I believe there would be several issues with the idea. For example, where would the air taxis depart and take off? Would there be specific locations? If so, doesn’t that defeat the purpose of being taken to a specific location? Or is it intended for long distance travel? Another issue is the expenses. If Volocopter finds the funds, is this something that consumers would be interested in? Would it be an alternative to airplanes? It only makes sense for investments to be made in Volocopter if there is demand from consumers. The article stated the vehicles being developed by Uber and Airbus. Uber is a company I use frequently and believe to be well-known. Airbus on the other hand is a company I have never heard of. Perhaps consumers will increase interest when they find out Uber is a part of the ongoing development. I would still have a lot of concern and skepticism from a consumer standpoint. How safe would this be exactly? It’s not like it would be on the ground and we would have control over the vehicle if something went array. Volocopter is not the only company that has this idea. Elon Musk has begun building a hyperloop train. It’s a high-speed train system that would allow you to go from LA to San Francisco in under 30 minutes. Speeds over 700 MPH are what will be the travel rate for a hyperloop. With new technology constantly on the rise and innovative people, we can only guess what will come next.

   http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/132405-what-is-elon-musk-s-hyperloop-the-700mph-subsonic-train-explained

5. This is such a cool idea. I remember one of my friends telling me he had to “uber helicopter” to a place for the weekend. I thought he was joking but he wasn’t. I checked how to do it, and its just as simple as ubering a regular car. This is so innovative and could be a great new way for people to start traveling if they need to be somewhere last minute or need to get somewhere fast (family/friend emergency). How people will pay for this I’m not sure, but this is a great new tool that will change air fare forever.

   https://www.uber.com/en-AE/blog/dubai/chopper/

6. Sourced Links for Research:

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_taxi

   https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/26/forget-flying-cars-and-get-ready-for-air-taxis/

7. In my opinion, technology like this has to always meet a certain criteria by consumers: Is it affordable? Another student, drw46, also voiced these concerns. They are also worried that with their initial price being greater than that of international air travel, consumers would not exactly be lining up to do this.

   A concern I feel that I would have with a service like this is how will the demand be met? With Uber, there are many potential cars and many potential drivers. But with a service like this, the company will have to provide employees and company vehicles to meet the demand. Licenses to operate anything like this (It’s basically a helicopter) seem to be a bit more difficult to get. Overall, I feel that this service will not be able to meet the demand at an affordable price.

8. Technology like this would be a huge step forward for our society. If this were to become a trend, it would be a huge change. Change is inevitable but we have to make sure we are ready to handle it. While autonomous air taxis are an amazing and innovative idea, they would come with the need for lots of new and strict regulations to be enforced, as well as high safety features. Air traffic would be difficult to keep under control, and accidents could be extremely dangerous not just to other air traffic, but to life on the ground as well. Although difficult and costly, successfully getting this technology up and running with strict regulations and safety features would be a huge technological advancement and could be an extremely helpful addition to our lives. I think it will take a lot of time and money to prepare the public for technology as innovative and life changing as this one, but it just might be worth it.

9. I think this air taxis idea is really innovative. I have also thought about flying in the sky when I was in the traffic jam. Because the sky are wild and open but cars people driving cannot even move one step during the traffic jam. So I dreamed that my car could fly in the sky so that I can save a lot of time on the road. And this air taxis is a more possible way for people to save time by traveling in the sky. In Dubai, there are tons of rich people and wild area to make this air taxis more possible to come true. But in US is totally the difference case. There are a lot of skyscraper in the city so that flying drones could be more dangerous than Dubai. And because of the danger of tall buildings, the FAA has some rules and regulations about drone. According to Public Law 112-95, Section 336 – Special Rule for Model Aircraft, as well as Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulation (14 CFR) Part 107, FAA has outlined several guidelines related to drone operation: drone must fly at or below 100 mph, must fly during daytime, must always yield right of way to manned aircraft etc. And some states also have their own laws restrict to drones. There is another problem which is safety. When there is some mechanical problems with cars, people could stop by and check what’s going on. But for air taxis, there is no way to stop in the sky and also passengers do not know any mechanical principles of drones. According to World Health Organization (WHO)’s research in 2015, the average amount of people dead in every 100,000 car accident is only 12.9. But for drones, they are flying in mid-high altitude so I think there is only a few people will survive during a drone accident. So I think safety is the biggest problem for air taxis and air taxis is not suitable for every countries.
   Resource:
   WHO, “WHO Report 2015: Data tables “http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_safety_status/2015/GSRRS2015_data/en/
   Andrew Meola, July 25, 2017, ‘The FAA rules and regulations you need to know to keep your drone use legal’
   http://www.businessinsider.com/drones-law-faa-regulations-2017-7

10. I think this concept is absolutely ingenious but I think there are also many little problems that would need to be worked out. I think the largest possible problem would be how the helicopter drone would land safely without the propeller chopping things into pieces. Especially if this technology is used in cities where buildings are very close together and there is little to know street space it seems a little risky. Another issue I could see is dealing with the weather. If a storm came out of nowhere while a drone was in the air then the drone and passenger would be thrown out and the company would be sued. Very cool technology but I think many safety features need to be considered.

11. This innovation is something that is going to be monumental, in my opinion. The concept of air taxis has been an ongoing effort in multiple countries with multiple technologies, and Dubai has finally completed the first successful trial run. First of all, Dubai is the perfect location for this fascinating technological development due to Dubai’s rich, diverse, and forward-thinking population. According to an article from inc.com written by Will Yakowicz, the aircraft, made by German company Volocopter, flew for 5 minutes at an altitude of 700 feet. The high-tech air taxi will transform the lives of so many individuals, especially in an urban setting to avoid traffic, safe travel time, and have the convenience of the Uber-like system. According to the article, Volocopter CEO Florian Reuter stated “Implementation would see you using your smartphone, having an app, and ordering a Volocopter to the next voloport near you.The volocopter would come and autonomously pick you up and take you to your destination.” The implementation will change the public transportation world tremendously, and it would just be the beginning. Of course there are a few flaws that would have to be worked out including environmental and air traffic regulations, and accessibility for the majority of the population. However, if those flaws get worked out, which I believe they will, this project will be gigantic.

    Source – https://www.inc.com/will-yakowicz/volocopter-air-taxi-test-flight-dubai.html

12. I think that this technology is super interesting but as soon as I saw it I started to wonder what problems this is going to create and how expensive is this going to be. In an article I found online I saw that air taxis at first are going to be significantly more expensive than traditional air travel. If they are that expensive I wonder if they will struggle to get people to pay for them. Another problem I saw in that same article was how local airports are going to safely handle the increased air traffic. If there are a lot of these they might make airports backed up all the time and possibly cause problems with planes trying to land on time in the airport which would not be good. However they did talk about how NASA made a “robotic air traffic controller capable of receiving requests to land from incoming planes and assigning them a number in line,” which if that works might solve the problem with air traffic.

    http://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/air-taxi4.htm

13. I think this idea is really cool and Dubai is the perfect place to start it off in my opinion. You have the richest people in the world and its always full of tourists. But when this comes to the US there are still going to be a lot of complications especially with the FAA because they are going to have a lot more traffic to worry about. But all in all I believe it would be awesome way of transportation, but its something that people will have to get use to, so I do not think that it will kick off right away, I mean we are still waiting for self driving cars to go into effect. Another big factor will be the price, because maintenance and fuel for a aircraft are not cheap, so money will also play a big role on how popular this becomes in the US. Overall though it’s a great idea and I would be 100% down to try it out.

14. The idea of the ‘Volocopter’ seems certainly like an interesting idea to me. I agree with the ideas on it providing less road traffic, however, I do wonder what could happen to air travel if this were to be something that takes off. Depending on the altitude that they would fly at, which I assume isn’t that high, hitting birds or other flying objects could become a problem which can indeed have the environmental impacts that they are claiming it’s free of. The other thing with the altitude of flight applies to someone like myself being a Meteorology major. I’m currently envisioning these flying at lower altitudes due to short flight times, which for me poses a logistical problem which happens to be the beloved weather radar. Fly these taxis low enough and a radar could easily detect it and give a false sense of something being there. Multiply that by a bunch of these copters and we are losing some of the most valuable short-term forecasting data there is. So all in all, I do agree that it is innovative and could continue to revolutionize the already rapidly changing industry, but for someone like myself, this could provide so many new challenges outside of the whole autonomous flying aspect.

    Additional Info:
    https://www.volocopter.com/de/urban-mobility/
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_radar

15. I think this is pretty interesting. It would definitely be an extremely efficient and quick way to travel as opposed to using a traditional taxi or Uber. I think this technology could pose problems in the future, however because there’s no easy way to control air traffic. It isn’t easy to designate lanes or implement traffic lights in the sky. I think strict regulations would need to be developed in order to make this mode of transportation as safe as possible. I don’t know if I would feel comfortable in an autonomous helicopter. I know how to drive a car, so if I was in a self driving car and I needed to assume control, I would be able to. Most people don’t know how to fly helicopters, so this mode of transportation wouldn’t be accessible to the average person immediately. I definitely think this idea is far fetched for the service to be available soon, but I could definitely see this being a possibility in the future, but just not as common as the company anticipates it to be.

16. We can all agree this technology is very innovative. You pose the question of personal use and trust. I think we can also agree that after a series of extensive tests and analysis, the majority of people will feel optimistic about this innovation. I believe we will learn to trust this uprising technology through time.
    However, personal use is the concept that will be nearly impossible to grasp. There’s a few reasons, mainly being the market is simply not ready for this. This technology is so innovative, in fact, that the public isn’t prepared for such a leap. For example, self driving cars are not even popular yet. I personally don’t know of anyone who has ever even tested one, let alone ride in one. And now they want to take this same concept into the air? I just don’t see it. Volocopter is in a non-existing market, and even having early adapters use this service is a stretch. Yes, this is cool. But until we see a large population using self driving cars, will then I begin to consider self driving helicopters.

17. I also think that the implementation of drone taxis would require the FAA to more heavily regulate drone air traffic, especially because one can’t expect Uber, Lyft, Airbus, etc to coordinate drone traffic by themselves. I’m sure this could also interfere with police and emergency medical helicopters, both of which rely heavily on relatively clear air traffic to function properly.

18. This technology seems like it could potentially be incredibly efficient, especially for travel in cities like Sao Paulo where transprotation infrastructure is positively abysmal and significantly impacts economic activity on everything from daily commuting to freight. However, I also think that it would pose a huge cyber-security vulnerability because rather than having functions controlled exclusively by driver or internal computer it is piloted remotely. I’m not sure I would feel great about this.