Passenger-Carrying Drone Gets Symbolic Approval For Test Flights In Nevada (theverge.com) 59
The Verge reports: "Chinese company Ehang caught our eye at CES earlier year, with the firm unveiling an autonomous quadcopter prototype it said was capable of ferrying human passengers without a pilot. We were wary of these unproven claims, but Ehang is obviously forging ahead with the vehicle. The company recently reached an agreement with Nevada's governor's office to develop the Ehang 184 at the state's FAA-approved UAV test site. However, this news should be taken with a pinch of salt: the Ehang 184 still isn't approved for testing by the FAA itself, and the company has yet to show a fully working prototype." Submitter kheldan adds this commentary: This should put you drone advocates' and self-driving car advocates' faith in your ideals to the test: Would you step into one of these and let it fly you away somewhere? I wouldn't!
Ehang says it plans to begin testing at the FAA-approved site some time later this year. Some of the difficulties it will have to face include creating an autonomous navigation system that can detect small obstacles like power lines, creating and regulating fixed paths for air travel, and managing the limitations of battery life (Ehang claims the 184 has a maximum flight time of 23 minutes).
Re:Solved a problem that doesn't exist (Score:5, Funny)
Medical and rescue missions come to mind. 23 minutes is a lot of time for a prototype carrying someone.
What's with the slashdot luddites? I feel like you'd be the same group of people to say the same thing about the horseless carriage or that new metal 'bronze'.
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There's a big difference between being a Luddite (opposed to all new technology) and waiting for new technology to mature for a bit, so they can get the the bugs worked out of it. Something that rolls on the ground? Maybe you can walk away from a catastrophic failure. An oversized quadcopter? You're dead. Tell you what: You can go up in it first, okay?
Skyscraper evacutation (Score:2)
What about the concept of having one of these as an emergency evacuation route from the 56th floor of a sky scraper. Granted you'd have to be well off to afford one but you'd not need a pilots license, or the ability to base jump, or depend on a 3 minute elevator that might possibly not be in service. I've had to flee the 25th floor of a 40 floor building on foot in emergency lighting at night during a fire following an earth quake. Not a fun experience by any stretch of the imagination. Luckily I was young
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What about the concept of having one of these as an emergency evacuation route from the 56th floor of a sky scraper.
It's hard to imagine it being cheaper than a winch. The winch retraction could be powered by a counterweight, making it free to operate.
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Other than the fact that you probably could not take your winch and counterweight system with you when you sold and moved on I agree. If the use of these was regulated you could possibly get multiple individuals out and down before the device lost charge. Excepting of course My 600LB descent (TM) reality show.
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Granted you'd have to be well off to afford one or punch out the rich ceo who left you to die in the office. People can to go extremes not to die.
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i'd rather use the first benz than a horse though.. from safety perspective.
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To small for Medical and an drone for that may need to make an manual landing just about any where and not just pre planned landing zones.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Solved a problem that doesn't exist (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, what's the point? Given that the flight time is 23 minutes, this is virtually useless for any serious travel.
Nobody is going to use a quadcopter for long distance travel. That is not the use case. It would be useful as a short distance shuttle, say from a rooftop in downtown SF to SFO, or downtown NYC to JFK.
Furthermore, it's likely to be far more expensive than services like Uber and Lyft.
Yes, and Uber is more expensive than riding a bike, and a bike is more expensive than walking. People are willing to spend money to save time.
it solves a problem that doesn't exist and never will exist.
Except that there are many existing businesses that offer piloted helicopters for about a thousand dollars an hour, to do pretty much the same thing this drone does.
I once paid $300 to ride in a helicopter over Mauna Loa. It was worth it. I would have been happy to save money and take a drone instead, as long as it had a reasonable track record of safety (maybe established by hauling cargo to remote roadless sites).
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The economics of point-to-point VTOL travel make a lot more sense when you factor in the lives lost every day in car crashes, and what we spend on building roads.
How can you claim that when you don't know how many might be killed in VTOL and you don't know how much it will cost? Aren't they the two fundamental pieces of data to qualify your statement?
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Nobody is going to use a quadcopter for long distance travel. That is not the use case. It would be useful as a short distance shuttle, say from a rooftop in downtown SF to SFO, or downtown NYC to JFK.
Sorry, Manhattan to JFK is 18 miles. You've forgotten mileage from the drone hub to your penthouse and from JFK back to the hub. Anywhere this thing can take you, it's only going to save a few minutes over ground transport.
Drone tourism I can see.
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But I'm still not believing that there's any market at all for such things.
If there is a market for fire trucks [quora.com] with long ladders, there is a market for this device.
Re:Solved a problem that doesn't exist (Score:4, Insightful)
23 minutes of flight time can get you to many more places than 23 minutes of drive time in San Fransisco, New York City, and Los Angeles.
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"Seriously, what's the point? Given that the flight time is 23 minutes, this is virtually useless for any serious travel."
Even with that limited range, I could see a market for delivery of first-class passengers between an airport and downtown, for close-by values of 'downtown', connecting with regular flights.
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What about?
15 Minutes Grand Canyon Tour,
State of the Act Pilotless Drone
Each trip charge for US$100. You will have a long lineup of tourists from all over the world.
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Are you a train executive from the early 1900s? Because you sound like one. They could have OWNED the airline industry, but they didn't. They did some studies and said "Yes, it will be feasible to fly from coast to coast in 5 hours, but it will be expensive. No one will want to pay for that when they could simply sit on a train FOR THREE DAYS." They thought airline travel would never take off. (Pardon the pun.) And look where they are now.
Do you really never take trips shorter than 23 minutes? (Fun fact: my
Oh, hell, why not? (Score:2)
Misread the words in the summary (Score:2)
"capable of terrifying passengers without a pilot"
Artists Renderings.... (Smoke meet Mirror) (Score:2)
...and animated video is the only thing this company has ever shown. Have they even every flown one for real?
PS.. Anyone else see a problem with the lower prop locations or are they disposables?
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All props are consumable items and eventually become wall art.
Those look like they were bought out of the giant scale RC plane market.
At least they have six, gives the computer a chance at a controlled crash landing if one fails. Of course the passenger is sitting more or less in rotating plane, so good broken prop catching fun potential.
Parachute (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this would be a good use-case for an airframe parachute http://cirrusaircraft.com/innovation/airframe-parachute/ [cirrusaircraft.com].
Yes, I would... when it is ready... (Score:4, Interesting)
This should put you drone advocates' and self-driving car advocates' faith in your ideals to the test: Would you step into one of these and let it fly you away somewhere? I wouldn't!
Sure, I'd be happy to, once it has actually been developed and the kinks worked out.
This is a totally solvable problem, it just requires time and money.
I've been flying for 15 years, the computer is a better pilot than a human is, in terms of control. Then it just becomes decision making ability. That needs to be worked on, but for fixed flights from point A to point B, known locations, that is totally doable.
As for "emergencies", yes they happen, but the reality is, not actually that often. For example, the number of pilots who have real engine failures in helicopters is actually lower than the number of injuries and deaths from training for them.
Frank Robinson (of Robinson Helicopters) actually proposed to the FAA that auto-rotation practice be stopped, because so many people were getting hurt doing it in his R22 compared to the few that actually had an engine quit.
drone vs autopilot (Score:2)
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Drones are evil, autopilot is good.
Except in cars. In cars, autopilot is evil.
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And give me a break on "handle emergen
Sounds like a nice way to gain access to... (Score:1)
...more ideas to steal/circumvent (from other companies testing drones there) and re-produce back at home (in China). *PROFIT*
vertical descents might be a little hairy (Score:2)
whirlybirds can't safely descend vertically at speed, the rotors enter their own downwash and you end up in a Vortex Ring State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] this is how real helicopters crash and drones too. You can put a drone into that state fairly easily on a still day, just drop fast in one spot, then apply power and note you are still dropping under full power for quite a long way until you apply some tilt or just manage to stop when you get near the ground. If they don't understand the dynamics o
Flying cars (Score:1)
So many things are dumb about this (Score:2)
1. Little wizzy blades are not efficient. Helicopters are more efficient, and fixed wing aircraft are even more efficient.
2. 23 minute flight time, but what is the recharge time? Certainly longer than getting another victim^H^H^H^H^H^Hpassenger in.
3. What is plan B when something goes wrong. I've flown quads, and sometimes the processor does something unplanned.
4. wizzy blades near the ground, how long before someone gets hurt by these blades?
5. Prototype aircraft usually gain 20-100% weight by the time all