No one loves traffic and getting stuck in it is downright torturous, irrespective of the vehicle you’re in. With limited space for roads, growing number of vehicles and more people moving to metro cities, traffic jams are here to stay, and grow consistently. Where to look for solutions then? The sky is what Airbus suggests because the company is already working on flying taxis. While flying cars have been around as ideas for long, Airbus means business as it plans to carry out tests for the first vehicle prototype as early as mid-2017 in Singapore.
The project named ‘Vahana’, intends to build an autonomous flying vehicle platform for passenger and cargo transport. Rodin Lyasoff, A3 Project Executive, explains,“Many of the technologies needed, such as batteries, motors and avionics are most of the way there”. The challenge however lies in developing the self-flying (autonomous) system. Lyasoff states the same and says a reliable sense-and-avoid technology doesn’t exist for airborne solutions today and even in cars autonomous-driving technology is still in its initial phase.
The service aimed at group transportation, similar to shared cabs or buses is named CityAirbus. Airbus considers transport-providers as a key consumer group since they could operate these flying cabs in a manner similar to Uber and Ola, with the help of smartphones. In simpler words, you could book a flying cab from your phone, head to the nearest helipad and board a CityAirbus heading towards your destination. The initial tests would be carried out with the help of a human pilot but eventually, all vehicles under the programme will be full-autonomous, requiring no pilot. In case you’re wondering how much would the service cost, Airbus claims if shared between four people, a helicpoter cab service shouldn’t cost more than a regular cab.
Tom Enders, CEO, Airbus Group, said “I’m no big fan of Star Wars, but it’s not crazy to imagine that one day our big cities will have flying cars making their way along roads in the sky. In a not too distant future, we’ll use our smartphones to book a fully automated flying taxi that will land outside our front door – without any pilot.”
Interestingly, the ‘not too distant future’ referred by Enders means as early as 2025 to 2030 is what we could make out from the complete release issued by Airbus. The company has conducted a feasibility study as well land the results are positive. Developing an autonomous flying system, which isn’t just reliable but can also be immune to threats such as hackers too.
