[rikur_]

Am I the only one having difficulty believing in 'personal airborne transportation systems' and 'urban air transport' - i.e. the concept that in a few (?) years, we'll all be flown around in autonomous 2-4 seat drones?

Lots of big brained people talking about it at a two day conference in Cologne at the moment - covering all sorts of issues from batteries, to power plants, to air traffic management systems, etc etc

Then I look back at my calendar for the last 6 months and the amount of flights I had pencilled in, but were then crossed out due to weather.

I'm not sure I'd like to be in an ultra-lightweight 2 seater drone hoping across London when it's 10kt gusting 15kt or worse, and I'm sure the buildings create some interesting windshear at the best of times.

Back to autonomous cars for tomorrow's conference - which will all now seem entirely realistic and achievable by comparison.

[CloudHound]

Talking to a developer about his companies plans, I realised his design for a 4 place vehicle capable of driverless travel on motorways at speeds up to 70 mph involved two pax facing rearwards.

[G4UMW]

"Hoping across London" sounds like an accurate description...

[Brooklands]

Talking to a developer about his companies plans, I realised his design for a 4 place vehicle capable of driverless travel on motorways at speeds up to 70 mph involved two pax facing rearwards.

He must have been a Captain Scarlet fan when younger

Brooklands

[MSGr]

It's important to work in and figure out all the challenges in the space (technology, regulation, etc) even if it might not be viable for years to come. No doubt the enthusiasts are more bullish than the reality will be -- I still recall that Segways were going to revolutionise transport.

No doubt it will eventually become viable, but my suspicions are that the control systems will be highly automatic with little manual control, and the crafts will fly in limited and designated corridors with geo-fencing and real-time separation/avoidance systems. The technology for all of those parts is variously there or will soon be. But I doubt there will be anything available to the general population before 2025, if that.

Electric powered planes, for example, will not really "take off" (pun intended) until there's a step change in battery technology (graphene?). There is simply no way to get viable (power/weight ratio) performance with current, or incremental advances in current , battery technology. It only succeeds in the very limited cases, i.e. short flight, low weight / low performance, training aircraft. But the learning experiences are great and will pay off when some new battery technology can come online.

The same also goes for drone deliveries. Fantastic for certain remote areas, but problematic for developed world urban areas where the vast majority of the world live. Though it makes for great PR and a stock price boost to announce that you're working on it and to put videos out about it ...

[rikur_]

@MSGr - largely agree with that - albeit still not sure what the solution to weather (particularly wind) is.

What seems to be the case with at least some of these companies is that the 'grand vision' is as much about staff recruitment and attracting investor interest. One of the people I was speaking to at lunch today had given a presentation in the morning about visionary connected autonomous cars, but actually the main revenue for the business comes from warehouse and logistic autonomous 'robots' and privately he was more realistic about some of the CAV stuff .... but it's a great vision to recruit people and investors.