Uber has signed a partnership with Nasa to collaborate in the development of its UAV taxi service. The company hopes to test it by 2020. The U. S. Space Agency will work on a system to regulate the traffic of these autonomous spacecraft.
Uber hopes to conquer the airways as he did on earth with his VTC service. To do this, the company is working on a project of vertical take-off and landing drones that will be able to transport passengers on short urban routes. At this week’s Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, the company announced that it has signed an agreement with NASA to move the project forward.
According to the American channel CNBC, which relayed the information, Uber signed a Space Act Agreement with the space agency for the development of a low-level autonomous aircraft traffic management system. According to the document published by Nasa, which we consulted, the agreement for an amount of $376,000 (approximately’ 323,000 at the current rate) was signed in January 2017 and will expire in January 2022.
Uber wants flying taxis for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics
No specific details are given as to the work that NASA will do and how Uber will use it for its service called UberAir (formerly Uber Elevate). But we know that the U. S. Space Agency has been working on this technology and testing it with UAVs since last year. The main idea of the concept is to create geo-recorded air corridors to distribute the different types of drones: leisure, delivery, taxis…
The stated objective is to make the UberAir service operational before the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. The company is targeting an initial fare for a race that is only slightly higher than a UberX car ride. The first trials are scheduled to start in 2020 in several major cities: Los Angeles and Dallas in the United States and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
Uber’s working on a drone taxi concept.
The Uber driver-assisted transport vehicle service revealed that he was working on a vertical take-off and landing UAV project that could carry passengers on short urban routes. Surprisingly, the idea is not new.
Ten years from now, when you draw your smartphone to order a Uber, it may not arrive by road, but by air! The service of transport vehicle with driver (VTC) has just revealed that he was working on the idea of an autonomous UAV with vertical take-off and landing.