China just approved flying taxis – no pilot needed
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China just approved flying taxis – no pilot needed
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Re: China just approved flying taxis – no pilot needed
#2I definitely don't want to belittle the achievement, but I would imagine that creating safe self-driving helicopters is much easier than creating safe self-driving cars. (At least as long as the skies are just as empty as they are today. Once it's full of things like the roads, that will be a different topic)
Re: China just approved flying taxis – no pilot needed
#3I definitely don't want to belittle the achievement, but I would imagine that creating safe self-driving helicopters is much easier than creating safe self-driving cars. (At least as long as the skies are just as empty as they are today. Once it's full of things like the roads, that will be a different topic)
Can you expand on how you reason it would be easier?
Re: China just approved flying taxis – no pilot needed
#4I definitely don't want to belittle the achievement, but I would imagine that creating safe self-driving helicopters is much easier than creating safe self-driving cars. (At least as long as the skies are just as empty as they are today. Once it's full of things like the roads, that will be a different topic)
Can you expand on how you reason it would be easier?
More degrees of freedom, easier collision avoidance. The mechanical part is a lot harder, of course, but the "self driving" part is a lot easier. We had autopilot and auto-land in planes well before we had anything of the sort in cars.
Re: China just approved flying taxis – no pilot needed
#5I wish to see the safety test of what happens when a blade breaks off and hits the passenger bay.
Re: China just approved flying taxis – no pilot needed
#6I wish to see the safety test of what happens when a blade breaks off and hits the passenger bay.
Yeah, without a reinforced nacelle you could easily end up with a fatal birdstrike here. One shudders to imagine how thin that polyethylene window is...
Re: China just approved flying taxis – no pilot needed
#7I definitely don't want to belittle the achievement, but I would imagine that creating safe self-driving helicopters is much easier than creating safe self-driving cars. (At least as long as the skies are just as empty as they are today. Once it's full of things like the roads, that will be a different topic)
Can you expand on how you reason it would be easier?
Open space. Fewer obstacles up there in the sky, separated by large distances. Simple trajectories. We've already had autopilot systems for decades.
Re: China just approved flying taxis – no pilot needed
#8I definitely don't want to belittle the achievement, but I would imagine that creating safe self-driving helicopters is much easier than creating safe self-driving cars. (At least as long as the skies are just as empty as they are today. Once it's full of things like the roads, that will be a different topic)
1 word: birds.
Anyway, detecting and avoiding obstacles should be in the menu. Maybe not as complex as at street level with people and cars doing unexpected things, but maybe with some added complexity that need to have into account like weather, inertia and things near landing sites.
Re: China just approved flying taxis – no pilot needed
#9I definitely don't want to belittle the achievement, but I would imagine that creating safe self-driving helicopters is much easier than creating safe self-driving cars. (At least as long as the skies are just as empty as they are today. Once it's full of things like the roads, that will be a different topic)
Can you expand on how you reason it would be easier?
Self-driving car senses objects and must make difficult decisions: Is this radar reflection from stationary light pole or from a moving object? Is this a parked car or a moving car? Will this pedestrain/biker jump on the roadway? What if the car next to me going to turn left sharply?
No such thing exists in the air. The air is mostly empty, there are no stationary objects next to the route. If there is a building, aircraft can fly as far as 500 meters away from it - try finding a driveable road with no obstacles at that distance. There is no people or large animals. There is not even curb to hit.
Importantly, I bet there are no legacy vehicles in the approved routes - and I am sure they will have some sort of V2V tech to ensure that all objects in the air will transmit their position and intention.
Re: China just approved flying taxis – no pilot needed
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you expand on how you reason it would be easier?
More degrees of freedom, easier collision avoidance. The mechanical part is a lot harder, of course, but the "self driving" part is a lot easier. We had autopilot and auto-land in planes well before we had anything of the sort in cars.
A self driving car needs to be able to reliably drive within ~1 foot of arbitrary obstacles, recognize junk in the road, recognize people in the road, obey vague hand signals from random cops, obey every weird traffic sign in the world, obey every traffic law, and disobey signs and laws when convention requires it.
Helicopters don’t have to deal with any of that. There won’t be any random obstacles. No human drivers to contend with. No conflict between legality and practice to navigate.