Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

In 2010, an advanced aircraft engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center named Mark Moore published a white paper outlining the feasibility of electric aircrafts that could take off and land like helicopters but were smaller and quieter. The vehicles would be capable of providing a speedy alternative to the dreary morning commute.

Moore's research (PDF) into so-called VTOL—short for vertical takeoff and landing, or more colloquially, flying cars—inspired at least one billionaire technologist. After reading the white paper, Google co-founder Larry Page secretly started and financed two Silicon Valley startups, Zee Aero and Kitty Hawk, to develop the technology, Bloomberg Businessweek reported last summer.

Now Moore is leaving the confines of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, where he has spent the last 30 years, to join one of Google's rivals: Uber Technologies Inc. Moore is taking on a new role as director of engineering for aviation at the ride-hailing company, working on a flying car initiative known as Uber Elevate. "I can't think of another company in a stronger position to be the leader for this new ecosystem and make the urban electric VTOL market real," he says.

Uber isn't constructing a flying car yet. In its own white paper published last October, the company laid out a radical vision for airborne commutes and identified technical challenges it said it wanted to help the nascent industry solve, like noise pollution, vehicle efficiency and limited battery life. Moore consulted on the paper and was impressed by the company's vision and potential impact.

Nikhil Goel, Uber's head of product for advanced programs, says the company wants to organize the industry to help spur development of flying cars. "Uber continues to see its role as an accelerant-catalyst to the entire ecosystem, and we are excited to have Mark joining us to work with manufacturers and stakeholders as we continue to explore the use case described in our whitepaper," Goel wrote in an e-mailed statement.

Moore acknowledged that many obstacles stand in the way, and they're not only technical. He says each flying car company would need to independently negotiate with suppliers to get prices down, and lobby regulators to certify aircrafts and relax air-traffic restrictions. But he says Uber, with its 55 million active riders, can uniquely demonstrate that there could be a massive, profitable and safe market. "If you don't have a business case that makes economic sense, than all of this is just a wild tech game and not really a wise investment," Moore says.

Uber's vision is a seductive one, particularly for sci-fi fans. The ride-hailing company envisions people taking conventional Ubers from their homes to nearby "vertiports" that dot residential neighborhoods. Then they would zoom up into the air and across town to the vertiport closest to their offices. ("We don't need stinking bridges!" says Moore.) These air taxis will only need ranges of between 50 to 100 miles, and Moore thinks that they can be at least partially recharged while passengers are boarding or exiting the aircraft. He also predicts we'll see several well-engineered flying cars in the next one to three years and that there will be human pilots, at least managing the onboard computers, for the foreseeable future.

His move to Uber is a risky one. Moore says he's leaving NASA one year before he's eligible for retirement and walking away from a significant percentage of his pension and free health care for life "to be in the right place at the right time to make this market real." (Though it's probably safe to say that Uber, with some $11 billion on its balance sheet, is making it worth his while.) Moore seems to be disillusioned with NASA, saying the agency is leaving promising new aviation markets to the private industry. "It's the federal government who is best positioned to overcome extremely high levels of risks," he says.

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While NASA is larded with layers of bureaucracy and management, Uber Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick has been closely involved in hatching his company's flying car plans, Moore says. That is, when he's not distracted with his own political crises, such as his role on President Donald Trump's advisory council, which he relinquished last week after criticism from customers, drivers and employees.

Kalanick's bet on Uber Elevate is another indication that while Silicon Valley seems on the surface to be consumed with politics and protests these days, the march into the future continues apace.

Source: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

Uber taps NASA engineer for flying cars

San Francisco-based rideshare company Uber has its eye on a new transit horizon: the literal horizon, as Bloomberg reports, the company confirms that it has hired a former NASA engineer to work on a potential flying car program.

The company announced Uber Elevate last year, envisioning electric flying cars that can ferry riders between San Francisco and San Jose in an estimated 15 minutes:

A network of small, electric aircraft that take off and land vertically [...] will enable rapid, reliable transportation between suburbs and cities and, ultimately, within cities. [...]

VTOLs do not need to follow fixed routes. Trains, buses, and cars all funnel people from A to B along a limited number of dedicated routes, exposing travelers to serious delays in the event of a single interruption. VTOLs, by contrast, can travel toward their destination independently of any specific path.

The company imagines small helipad-style landing and takeoff zones on top of parking garages and along the sides of highways to ferry passengers hither and thither between critical points.

Long the fare of science fiction, flying cars have actually existed in various forms for decades. Even Henry Ford tried to make a two-seater personal aircraft that blurred the line between car and plane 90 years ago.

But most flying car designs just aren't every good. Popular Mechanics explained in 2013:

We'd essentially be building small planes that look like cars, which are expensive, awkward to fly, and create a host of new legal issues to deal with. [...] Costs would be beyond astronomical, and, while they're not in the cold fusion realm of near-impossibility, high-temperature superconductors don't seem likely to emerge anytime soon.

But Moore, a Stanford graduate who designed aircraft for NASA for 30 years, reawakened the dream of the flying car in Silicon Valley with a 2010 paper about efficient electric lift and landing mechanisms that he dubbed "game changers."

"Electric propulsion is considered a 'frontier' technology that offers [...] capabilities previously not possible," wrote Moore.

An Uber spokesperson tells Curbed SF that the company is not actually building flying cars yet, nor necessarily committing to such a project in the future. Last year's proposal is still just that: a proposal.

Still, bringing Moore on shows that they're serious about ironing out the technical challenges. "Uber continues to see its role as a catalyst to the growing developing VTOL ecosystem," the company's head of product for advanced programs said through the spokesperson.

Meanwhile, Google co-founder Larry Page has been funneling money into flying car startups for years.

The skies are clear for now, "But give it a few more years and the writing's on the wall that you will be able to make a very practical aircraft" as one researcher told Vox in 2016.

Source: Uber taps NASA engineer for flying cars

A commuter’s dream: Entrepreneurs race to develop flying car

Even before George Jetson entranced kids with his cartoon flying car, people dreamed of soaring above traffic congestion. Inventors and entrepreneurs have long tried and failed to make the dream a reality, but that may be changing.

Nearly a dozen companies around the globe, including some with deep pockets such as European aircraft maker Airbus, are competing to be the first to develop a new kind of aircraft that will enable commuters to glide above crowded roadways. A few of the aircraft under development are cars with wings that unfold for flight, but most aren't cars at all. Typically they take off and land vertically like helicopters. Rather than a single, large main rotor, they have multiple small rotors. Each rotor is operated by a battery-powered electric motor instead of a conventional aircraft piston engine.

It's no sure bet that flying-car dreams will turn into reality. There are many obstacles, including convincing regulators that the aircraft are safe , figuring out how to handle thousands of low-flying aircraft over cities without collisions and developing batteries that will keep them aloft long enough to be useful.

But entrepreneurs are moving forward. They see a vast potential market for "air taxis" and personally owned small aircraft to transport people from the fringes of metropolitan areas to city centers as urban areas grow more congested and people spend more time stuck in traffic. They envision tens of thousands of one or two-person flying taxis delivering passengers to the rooftops of office buildings in city centers and other landing pads during rush hours.

"In as little as 10 years, products could be on the market that revolutionize urban travel for millions of people," said Zach Lovering, the leader of Airbus' project to develop an autonomous flying taxi called the Vahana. The name means the mount or vehicle of a Hindu deity.

Uber released a 98-page report in October making the busines s case for air taxis, which the company sees as the future of on-demand transportation. Uber doesn't have any plans to develop a flying car itself, but the online transportation network is advising several companies that have aircraft in the works.

"The role we want to play is as a catalyst for the entire industry," said Nikhil Goel, an Uber project manager for advanced programs.

Some of the aircraft are drones that passengers will be able to program for flight using a smartphone. Others will be operated from the ground or a command center, and some are designed for human pilots.

It's unclear yet how much the aircraft will cost, although prices are likely to vary significantly. Some of the aircraft are designed to be individually owned, while others are envisioned more for commercial use. Designers hope that if demand is high, prices can be kept affordable through economies of mass production.

Several recent developments could make these aircraft possible. Advances in computing power mean the rotors on multi-copter drones can be adjusted many times per second, making the aircraft easy to control. Drones have also benefited from advances in battery and electric motor technology. Some companies, like Chinese dronemaker EHang, are scaling-up drones so that they can carry people.

Another aircraft under development, Santa Cruz, Calif.-based Joby Aviation's S2, looks more like a conventional plane except that there are 12 tiltrotors spread along the wings and tail. And some, like the Vahana, a cockpit mounted on a sled and flanked by propellers in front and back, don't really look like any aircraft in the skies today.

"In terms of what you can make fly in a reliable manner, the solution speed gateway that (computer) chips have gone through recently have literally opened the door to a whole new world of flying machine possibilities," said Charles Eastlake, an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University professor emer itus of aerospace engineering.

But he also cautioned: "My best engineering guess is that people actually using autonomous air taxis in the next 10 or 15 years is possible, but definitely not certain. The challenges are big."

Key for many of the designs will be the development of longer-lasting lightweight batteries. Currently available batteries could probably keep an air taxi aloft about 15 to 30 minutes before it would have to land, experts said. Depending on how fast the aircraft flies, that probably isn't enough to transport passengers between nearby cities or across metropolitan areas, experts said.

Another hurdle will be winning Federal Aviation Administration certification for any radical new kind of aircraft, when approval of even small changes in aviation technology can take years.

The FAA said in a statement that it is taking a "flexible, open-minded and risk-based approach" to flying cars. FAA officials have discussed with several man ufacturers the certification of aircraft that will be flown with a pilot in the beginning, and later converted to an autonomous passenger aircraft.

While further research is needed to ensure that autonomous aircraft are safe, "we believe automation technology already being prototyped in low-risk unmanned aircraft missions, when fully mature, could have a positive effect" on aviation safety, the agency said.

Reducing noise is another challenge, since air taxis will be taking off and landing in densely populated areas. So is creating enough landing pads to handle lots of aircraft at the same time. A new air traffic control system would also likely be needed.

"It's pretty clear that the existing air traffic control system won't scale to the kind of density at low altitudes that people are talking about," said John Hansman, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who chairs the FAA's research and engineering advisory committee.

NASA is developing an air traffic control system for small drones that perhaps could be expanded to include flying cars.

"There's no question we can build the vehicle," Hansman said. "The big challenge is whether we can build a vehicle that would be allowed to operate in the places where people want to use it."

Source: A commuter's dream: Entrepreneurs race to develop flying car

A Commuter's Dream: Entrepreneurs Race To Develop Flying Car

Even before George Jetson entranced kids with his cartoon flying car, people dreamed of soaring above traffic congestion. Inventors and entrepreneurs have long tried and failed to make the dream a reality, but that may be changing.

Nearly a dozen companies around the globe, including some with deep pockets such as European aircraft maker Airbus, are competing to be the first to develop a new kind of aircraft that will enable commuters to glide above crowded roadways. A few of the aircraft under development are cars with wings that unfold for flight, but most aren't cars at all. Typically they take off and land vertically like helicopters. Rather than a single, large main rotor, they have multiple small rotors. Each rotor is operated by a battery-powered electric motor instead of a conventional aircraft piston engine.

It's no sure bet that flying-car dreams will turn into reality. There are many obstacles, including convincing regulators that the aircraft are safe, figuring out how to handle thousands of new low-flying aircraft over cities without collisions and developing batteries that will keep them aloft long enough to be useful.

But entrepreneurs are moving forward. They see a vast potential market for "air taxis" and personally owned small aircraft to transport people from the fringes of metropolitan areas to city centers as urban areas grow more congested and people spend more time stuck in traffic. They envision tens of thousands of one or two-person flying taxis delivering passengers to the rooftops of office buildings in city centers and other landing pads during rush hours.

"In as little as 10 years, products could be on the market that revolutionize urban travel for millions of people," said Zach Lovering, the leader of Airbus' project to develop an autonomous flying taxi called the Vahana. The name means the mount or vehicle of a Hindu deity.

Uber released a 98-page report in October making the business case for air taxis, which the company sees as the future of on-demand transportation. Uber doesn't have any plans to develop a flying car itself, but the online transportation network is advising several companies that have aircraft in the works.

"The role we want to play is as a catalyst for the entire industry," said Nikhil Goel, an Uber project manager for advanced programs.

Some of the aircraft are drones that passengers will be able to program for flight using a smartphone. Others will be operated from the ground or a command center, and some are designed for human pilots.

It's unclear yet how much the aircraft will cost, although prices are likely to vary significantly. Some of the aircraft are designed to be individually owned, while others are envisioned more for commercial use. Designers hope that if demand is high, prices can be kept affordable through economies of mass production.

Several recent developments could make these aircraft possible. Advances in computing power mean the rotors on multi-copter drones can be adjusted many times per second, making the aircraft easy to control. Drones have also benefited from advances in battery and electric motor technology. Some companies, like Chinese dronemaker EHang, are scaling-up drones so that they can carry people.

Another aircraft under development, Santa Cruz, California-based Joby Aviation's S2 [pictured above], looks more like a conventional plane except that there are 12 tiltrotors spread along the wings and tail. And some, like the Vahana, a cockpit mounted on a sled and flanked by propellers in front and back, don't really look like any aircraft in the skies today.

"In terms of what you can make fly in a reliable manner, the solution speed gateway that (computer) chips have gone through recently have literally opened the door to a whole new world of flying machine possibilities," said Charles Eastlake, an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University professor emeritus of aerospace engineering.

But he also cautioned: "My best engineering guess is that people actually using autonomous air taxis in the next 10 or 15 years is possible, but definitely not certain. The challenges are big."

Key for many of the designs will be the development of longer-lasting lightweight batteries. Currently available batteries could probably keep an air taxi aloft about 15 to 30 minutes before it would have to land, experts said. Depending on how fast the aircraft flies, that probably isn't quite enough to transport passengers between nearby cities or across metropolitan areas, experts said.

Another hurdle will be winning Federal Aviation Administration certification for any radical new kind of aircraft when approval of even small changes in aviation technology can take years.

The FAA said in a statement that it is taking a "flexible, open-minded, and risk-based approach" to flying cars. FAA officials have discussed with several manufacturers the certification of aircraft that will be flown with a pilot in the beginning, and later converted to an autonomous passenger aircraft.

While further research is needed to ensure that autonomous aircraft are safe, "we believe automation technology already being prototyped in low-risk unmanned aircraft missions, when fully mature, could have a positive effect" on aviation safety, the agency said.

Reducing noise is another challenge since air taxis will be taking off and landing in densely populated areas. So is creating enough landing pads to handle lots of aircraft at the same time. A new air traffic control system would also likely be needed.

"It's pretty clear that the existing air traffic control system won't scale to the kind of density at low altitudes that people are talking about," said John Hansman, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who chairs the FAA's research and engineering advisory committee.

NASA is developing an air traffic control system for small drones that perhaps could be expanded to include flying cars.

"There's no question we can build the vehicle," Hansman said. "The big challenge is whether we can build a vehicle that would be allowed to operate in the places where people want to use it."

© 2017 Associated Press under contract with NewsEdge/Acquire Media. All rights reserved.

Source: A Commuter's Dream: Entrepreneurs Race To Develop Flying Car

A Jetpack Company Is Coming Out With Flying Cars

In Brief

As battery technology increases with the ever-growing use of electric cars, a flying vehicle will become more and more possible

While Jetpack Aviation is making huge leaps forward in flying car design and technology, they are not the only ones. There is actually competition in the flying car market

Flying Cars on the Horizon

The guys who brought the world its first working jetpack are now looking to get into the flying car business. David Mayman of Jetpack Aviation (JPA) took some time to discuss his new concept designs with New Atlas.

The concept vehicle would be a manned multirotor vehicle with a dozen propellers arrayed coaxially. The vehicle would be capable of speeds up to 145 km/h (90 mph) and vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL). One of the drawbacks of this technology at this point in development is how limited fly times are given the current state of battery capacity. However, as more traditional car companies go electric, the technology will catch up rapidly. According to Mayman, "…the beauty of distributed electric propulsion is that it's very, very scalable. The way that electric motors work, it's hey, you wanna make something for two people? OK, you just add power to the electric motors."

Image credit: JPA                                                                 Closer Than You Think

The rapid pace of current technological innovation is actually making the first flying cars relatively easy to develop. Drone technology can be thanked for much of the advancement. "Drone technology has advanced all of that stuff – the autopilot, the stabilization – to the point where we nearly don't have to do any R&D for that. We can just about start from off-the-shelf products and customize it for our use," says Mayman.

There is actually plenty of competition in this burgeoning field. Some of the biggest names in both tech and aviation are throwing their concepts into the race. A Skype co-founder is investing millions in a super-fast flying car concept that reaches speeds up to 250 km/h (155 mph), a Google co-founder was even spotted coming out of a flying car in October of last year, and perhaps the most exciting prospect comes from Airbus's plans to develop an autonomous flying car sometime this year.

Source: A Jetpack Company Is Coming Out With Flying Cars

According to Experts, We’re 10 Years Away From Autonomous Flying Taxis

Ridesharing in the Sky

Way before Elon Musk planned to drill under Los Angeles to avoid traffic, several companies had already been toying with the idea of beating traffic by going over it. Indeed, flying cars have long been a part of science fiction, but they could soon become a part of our everyday reality. And once we have autonomous flying cars, it's only a matter of time before we have autonomous flying taxis for those who prefer hitching a ride to owning one.

According to a report by the Associated Press, experts think flying taxis could arrive in the next 10 to 15 years. "In terms of what you can make fly in a reliable manner, the solution speed gateway that (computer) chips have gone through recently have literally opened the door to a whole new world of flying machine possibilities," Charles Eastlake, an aerospace engineering professor at Embry-Riddle University, told the AP. "My best engineering guess is that people actually using autonomous air taxis in the next 10 or 15 years is possible, but definitely not certain. The challenges are big."

In the Works

Certainly, recent developments in engineering have contributed greatly to bringing flying cars closer to reality. Still, there are other technical hurdles to overcome, and more still in order to develop flying vehicles that are autonomous. For one, there aren't yet any flight versions of autonomous sensory systems found in self-driving cars. There's also the challenge of battery weight, which is an issue even for current electric cars that stay on the ground — autonomous flying taxis would need much better, lighter batteries.

In addition to sorting out the technology, we'd also need ground infrastructure that would allow flying vehicles to operate unobstructed, with enough space for take-off and landing zones. "There's no question we can build the vehicle," MIT professor John Hansman, who advises the FAA, told the AP. "The big challenge is whether we can build a vehicle that would be allowed to operate in the places where people want to use it."

That isn't an insurmountable hurdle, though, as ridesharing company Uber already has infrastructure plans for a flying taxi service that relies on vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicles. Indeed, they aren't the only company thinking about this new era in travel. European aircraft manufacturer Airbus is keen on delivering a prototype of its A3 Vahana this year, with plans to have it ready for production by 2020. Israeli tech firm Urban Aeronautics has already created prototypes of its Cormorant, a people-carrying drone that's intended for military use and that can attain speeds of up to 185 km/h (115 mph), hover for an hour, and carry up to 1,100 pounds. 

Apart from these, there are still others: the VTOL Lilium Jet; AeroMobil 3.0, which uses regular gasoline; Chinese drone-maker EHang's 184 person-carrying drone; Joby Aviation's all-electric VTOL S2; and the Zee VTOL car, which Google founder Larry Page was supposedly spotted in, just to name a few. Undoubtedly, with all these projects in the works, it's clear that flying cars and autonomous flying taxis are coming. It's just a matter of how soon we can be ready for them.

Source: According to Experts, We're 10 Years Away From Autonomous Flying Taxis

Are we ready for the flying car?

Flying cars have long been a staple of science fiction, perhaps most famously in the oft-repeated 1960s cartoon series The Jetsons. But how close are they to being delivered in real life? Well, several companies including European aircraft maker Airbus are competing to be the first to develop vehicles with wings that take off and land vertically – and, if truth be told, look more like helicopters than cars.

These vehicles could revolutionise urban travel for millions of people around the world. Given their small size and relatively simple technology, they will probably be easy to operate and manoeuvre. However, they would require attentive drivers who can handle working with the added dimension of height. Considering some of the driving we witness in our cities every day, are we going to feel safe in, around and with these vehicles above us?

Then there is noise pollution. With people already complaining about drones buzzing their buildings, how will we cope with cars flying past at full throttle with their sound systems blaring?

Source: Are we ready for the flying car?