Keeping in mind the fanciful concept of air traffic, now there are so many big names investing money into the development of flying cars. The big names are very serious to put more into future air transportation technology. Recently an agreement has been made with NASA to work out how to manage incoming air traffic.
Last year Uber revealed plans for flying taxi service named as Uber Elevate. Initially it was decided to use vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft to change how people move around cities because there are many forward-thinking aviation companies which are working on similar projects.
One of these projects is the CityAirbus project by Airbus which is being expected to begin flight testing next year-the eighteen-rotor Volocoper that took its first unmanned flight over Dubai in September and the recently announce Autonomous Passenger Drone that has undergone flight testing in Europe.
Whether all or few of these projects come to fruition, it look like that the skies are going to much busier with air traffic. So come the topic that where NASA comes in it. According to CNBC, a deal has been finalized between space agency NASA and Uber on Wedbesday. The purpose of this deal is to develop a system for “unmanned traffic management” to deal with the aerial influx.
NASA has been already working on a similar system for unmanned drones and tested it last year. The idea behind is that corridors of airspace may be sectioned off for specific unmanned application. As there will be a lot of air traffic like video drones, high-speed delivery drones. Despite of all these, Uber wants that its flying taxis will do their things.
After announcing plans to start testing its flying taxi service in Dubai and Dallas in 2020, Uber has also now added Los Angeles in the list. Named the service as UberAir, the company imagines that passengers call its flying taxis just by pushing one button and travel along fixed routes between city hubs called Skyports.
“UberAir will be performing far more flights on a daily basis than it has ever been done before,” Jeff Holden, chief product officer at Uber, said in a statement. “Doing this safely and efficiently is going to require a foundational change in airspace management technologies. Combining Uber’s software engineering expertise with NASA’s decades of airspace experience to tackle this is a crucial step forward for Uber Elevate.”
