The unmanned vehicles that hit people's eyes are in the ascendant, and the airlines have again challenged people's imagination! If you think that no one car is cool enough, what about "flying unmanned vehicles"?
In recent days, Airbus Group has announced on its official website the vision of constructing an up-and-coming air city: drone automatic transportation system and online flight taxi service .
Airbus Group is the world’s second-largest transnational aerospace and defense company established in 1970 and operates commercial aircraft, defense and aerospace, commercial and military helicopters. The world’s largest civilian aircraft is the A380 family in their home.
The main research and development task of this project was given to the Airbus A3 branch office in Silicon Valley. A3 is developing an automatic flight transportation platform codenamed Vahana. The Vahana design aims to transport passengers as well as ships. Goods .
Regarding the feasibility of the project, Rodin Layoff, project manager of the A3 department, stated that it is feasible to establish the Vahana platform in 2017 because the technologies needed are already “more or less matureâ€, including batteries, motors, and avionics. The main challenge facing the team is to build an airborne comprehensive awareness and obstacle avoidance system. Such a system has just been used in ground cars, such as Google’s unmanned vehicles, and there is currently no mature solution in the field of air transport.
However, the experimental site of the Vahana platform has been found, and the test project is named "Skyways".
In February this year, Airbus has signed a memorandum with the Civil Aviation Administration of Singapore to allow Airbus’s helicopter subsidiary to test drone delivery service on the campus of the National University of Singapore. This project is called “Skyways†and is To solve the so-called "last mile" problem .
The following figure shows the concept picture of the entire system. These "overpass"-like pipelines are full of fully automated drones. They carry goods from one entrance of the pipeline, arrive at the designated unloading point according to a predetermined route, and the user receives the arrival message of the goods on the mobile phone and goes to the designated place. Pick up can be. The Skyways system also aims to list e-commerce companies like Amazon as their target customers. It is reported that this test will be conducted in 2017.
While Vahana and Skyways were conducting, Airbus was still laying out a more ambitious business plan: an air taxi, named "CityAirbus" . According to its official website, this sky taxi can take multiple passengers at the same time, much like a helicopter. In order to enter the market quickly, CityAirbus still needs the driver in the initial stage, but once the relevant regulations are established, it will be transformed into a fully automatic unmanned aerial vehicle.
CityAirbus concept map
Airbus CEO Tom Enders said: “I’m not a fan of Star Wars, but the concept of flying cars in the city is not crazy. In the near future, we will be able to use a mobile phone to book a fully automated flight. Taxi arrived at the door."
Although such a business plan boldly ahead of schedule, a company with a strong capital and strength such as Airbus has officially announced it, and it cannot help but let Lei Fengwang (search for "Lei Feng Net" public concern) look forward to it. .
Via Airbus