Driverless Taxi Drones Heading to Dubai
Furthering it's goals to be a City of the Future, Dubai, UAE is adding a new project on top of the first 3D printed office and the planned hyperloop. Starting this July, the city's Roads and Transportation chief Mattar al-Tayer plans to begin "regular operations"of the Ehang 184 Autonomous Aerial Vehicle for a driverless taxi service. Prior to this the countries ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum had stated he wanted a quarter of all the city's passenger trips to be driverless by 2030 which has already been worked towards using the EZ10 autonomous shuttle.
First shown at last years Consumer Electronics Show, the 184 part in the vehicles name stands for "one person, 8 rotors and 4 arms." It already has had testing approved by the state within the state of Nevada, but it's unlikely we will see these in the US in the near future due to more stringent regulations.
A destination is set using a mobile app with no manual steering options and controlled using 4G mobile internet, allowing users to not need a pilots license. With battery capacity for 23 minute flight, the Ehang 184 has a range up to 31 miles with a maximum altitude of 11,000 feet. The drone has a capacity for a 220 pound person and a 40 pound carry-on that is expected to typically fly at 62 mph (with a 100 mph top speed.) The expected price tag for each vehicles is between $200,000 and $300,000.
The flights will be controlled from Ehang's flight command center in Guangzhou where they will monitor live data -- including speeds, altitude, individual propeller power, location, drone camera feed and video feed of the passenger -- plus communicate with passengers and schedule air traffic.
With an eye for safety Ehang designed their AAV with:
• “Multiple backups” in place
• 4 of the 8 rotors can stop and the vehicle could be able to land safely
• The 184 AAV is embedded with Ehangen fail safe system
• Auto-landing in case of trouble
• On-Star-like command center for fliers who need help
A few of the additional amenities so far include air conditioning, a 4G Wifi connection and a dual color reading light.
There has been a lot of previous skepticism if this project will be successful due to the potential safety and legal concerns. On top of this the Ehang 184 would be competing with piloted helicopters "such as the Robinson R44 Raven I costs $355.000 brand new" (versus the $200,000-$300,00 estimate,) a 350 mile range compared to 31 miles, 3 person capacity instead of 1.
One saving grace to the project could be that as demand scales up, production costs could reduce to make the Ehag 184 more competitive compared to current piloted helicopters. This is one of those situations where only time will tell, but Dubai sure seems to be on board to be the first use-case scenario.
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Image Sources:
Ehang 184
Control Screen
Specs
That would be wild. Maybe one day in the future soon.
It'd be pretty sweet to be able to experience. I would be surprised to see it in the US anytime soon. I think a visit to Dubai is going on my bucket list. :P
Take the drone to the indoor downhill ski resort. Pretty wild stuff they have there, from what I hear. Buckets away ( :
Lol, the skiers wouldn't know what hit them!
They have such cool stuff in Dubai! I so await to see some of that here...I think I'd heard of there being an indoor skiing place around here, but it's not like we never have snow here. Just a lack of mountains :P
That's a really cool looking drone! An upside of it is that it doesn't have to deal with the same roadside artifacts that driverless cars have to deal with. Just changing altitude would already deal with any traffic problems. Some foreseeable problems here though are passenger safety and the energy the drones consume. All very fixable problems. Dubai is really taking advantage of the wealth afforded to it!
The passenger safety has been a big one in my mind. The Ehang company definitely seemed to put a lot of work and design to help on this with various systems like auto-landing with any issue and the ability to keep flying with only 4 of the 8 rotors going. But given enough time, something always seems to pop up causing a major problem that can't be handled.
I'd seen some sites asking for the inclusion of a parachute or some other kind of backup like that. I look forward to the day that when a 'flying car' stops working/powers down...it just hovers there instead of falling.
Even with the drones being all electric, I couldn't find anything on the actual power consumption from the batteries. I'm not sure if this was tested just yet or the company didn't want to release that.
Hopefully if Dubai makes this or other projects like the hyperloop work successfully, while saving money over time, they could catch on in other places.
Oh, a parachute is definitely a must. Like a life jacket should be to ferries. I like how they designed it like a drone instead of a car, so that it would be more stable. Maneuverability is always an issue, so at least it's a bit taken care of.
Yeah, the world is so gunshy when it comes to innovation sometimes. They always want proof that what they're spending money on really does what it's intended for. It's completely understandable. But, as it stands, the bold really are the ones who change the world. I hope they strive for more eco-friendly solutions for sustainability.
Bingo! There has to be plans for when things catastrophically fail. They seem to have taken good measure, but it's bound to happen eventually.
I'm with you there...that seems to be a part of the plans for Dubai with so many of their new projects being electric, but I still would need to research how they're actually generating that power right now or planned for the future.
I wouldn't be surprised if they will be the first ones to have a working hydrogen fusion reactor (0% carbon footprint woot!) The would really drop the mic with regard to innovations in power generation.
As I said in another post on the topic, this is really cool. I am looking forward to see it spread all over the world.
Btw, there is an image missing (the one after the first video).
I'm with you there. It'd be cool to see everyone zipping around like the Jetsons. I do have to unfortunately expect one of these eventually to fall out of the sky...something always happens given enough time. In this case it would take more than 4 rotors to stop working. I think I'd be just as happy zipping around the hyperloop tubes like futurama, at least I'd be closer to the ground. Lol
Heh, everything seems to be showing alright for me when I looked. I'm pretty sure that was just a page divider anyway though...you didn't miss anything important. Thank you for the heads up.
The Jetsons! Now I am feeling really old!
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