Self-Flying Air Taxis Are Right Around the Corner
Look overhead. Is it a bird, a plane? No, that’s a flying car. And it’s coming to the skies near you sooner than you think.
If you’re like me, the idea of flying cars is a Jetsons-era fantasy. It was cute, like their pet dog, Astro. I never thought it would happen in my lifetime. Yet, serious aviation companies like Airbus say it will happen soon. And it’s going to be big.
“We believe that global demand for this category of aircraft can support fleets of millions of vehicles worldwide,” says Rodin Lyasoff, chief executive of A3. “In as little as 10 years, we could have products on the market that revolutionize urban travel for millions of people.”
Lyasoff is the face of future flying cars. The Bulgarian-born engineer has been bouncing around the leading edge of aeronautics since his early days designing autonomous helicopters at engineering powerhouse MIT. In October 2016, he was promoted to lead A3, the hip, Silicon Valley subsidiary of Airbus, the European commercial aviation giant.
A3 was given just one mission: Disrupt its massive parent before someone else did.
Disruption of traditional business models is a familiar theme in this era of unlimited compute power. Advanced modeling and analytics make almost anything possible.
Thankfully, most of the hardware issues for commuter drones is already solved. A3 has drawn up a prototype autonomous air taxi, left. Powerful battery and electric motor technology can be borrowed from electric cars. And Lyasoff believes the avionics end is “almost all the way there.”
At this juncture, the only thing standing between you and your morning commute in an autonomous drone is the deep learning software that will stop the small aircraft from careening into each other.
That hurdle is proving to be surprisingly low.
Nvidia (NVDA) has spent the better part of five years and several billion dollars developing deep learning software for autonomous vehicles. Its Drive PX2 is cable of guiding cars along winding dirt roads in a driving rain. The platform is powerful and scalable.
Intel (INTC) and Qualcomm (QCOM) are in the mix, too. Intel dazzled more that 110 million viewers during the 2017 Super Bowl half-time show when it flew 500 drones in formation. The RealSense technology inside used sensors to build complex 3-D maps. It’s rival Qualcomm is going one step further with a massive, low-latency network that would allow drones to connect. They would see each other and use autonomous path planning.
Bringing these technologies, or some derivatives, to small aircraft capable of ferrying people doesn’t seem like a big ask. That may be why A3 is so confident. The technology is there. It’s now just a matter of making it all work together – and of getting both governments and the public in synch with the idea.
Others have noticed. Money-losing startup Uber has shown interest in autonomous flying drones. Shuttling well-heeled patrons around cities in unmanned airborne luxury suites while the rest of us trundle around congested city streets and freeways might be a very lucrative business.
I’m sure Airbus and A3 would be happy to sell an entire fleet. The first prototype is scheduled to begin test flights before the end of 2017. Production models are planned for 2020.
Best wishes,
Jon Markman
