At the Nantucket Conference held a few days ago, Jeff Holden, product manager at Uber, said that the rapid growth of travel business has given Uber confidence in the sharing economy's travel mode, and Uber is also exploring. A more avant-garde travel mode: short-distance city flight.
This technology is called VTOL. The aircraft equipped with this technology can take off and hover vertically. It is a little bit like the helicopter in our image, but it is not the same. The aircraft has multiple propellers and can be fixed-wing design. The use of batteries to provide power is much less than helicopter noise.
Uber has been researching how to improve urban traffic efficiency. This is true from self-driving cars to vertical take-off and landing technology. UberJeff Holden said that he hopes to provide this kind of product to users in the future so that everyone can move anywhere in the sky.
In an interview with foreign media, Jeff Holden also admitted that this technology will not be realized in the short term and may take ten years or more because it needs to take into account the population density in the region and the utilization of space on the ground. And how to avoid these aircraft collisions and other issues.
Stereoscopic traffic is a very good idea, except Uber, including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is also studying a similar project called VTOL X-Plane, which aims to overcome some of the fixed rotor, speed, etc. Technical challenges to achieve true vertical take-off and landing.
Of course, there are also some startup companies that have focused on the research of this kind of aircraft. Among them, the vocalization of TERRAFUGIA (link of the official website) is relatively high. At the T-EGGDGE edge innovation conference held last year by Titanium Media, the company was also invited to the founding of this company. People shared the concept of three-dimensional traffic. See the story “The founder of TERRAFUGIA said that cars should have “wings†like birds.â€
TERRAFUGIA announced the first sensory car Transition in 2013. After two years of improvement, the first upgraded version of the Transition was tested. At the same time, they were fortunate to have received a special permission from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Permit, allowing the company to test similar in US airspace.
Later, TERRAFUGIA spent a lot of energy developing another TF-X automatic driving machine, which has become the focus of the current research and development. The F-X's body size is not very large. The foldable wing provides convenience for the parking of the vehicle and can be parked in a home garage like an ordinary car.
When you need to fly, just turn on the engine button. The flying car can open the wing within 40 seconds. Like a scene in a science fiction movie, it can take off and land on an airport or highway.
TERRAFUGIA is expected to officially launch this cross-border product around 2015, but before that, in addition to the severe technical difficulties that need to be overcome, it is also important to plan this matter from the legal level.
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