China gives Ehang the first industry approval for fully autonomous passenger-carrying air taxis::Ehang shares have nearly doubled in price this year, before trading was temporarily halted Monday pending a significant announcement.

  • AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    9 months ago

    Agreed, above trees and buildings there is a lot less air traffic to worry about. But you get into the inherent dangers of air travel. Helicopters are especially dangerous, unlike planes if they lose power they cannot glide at all. In addition they take off vertically, assuming there will be set takeoff landing areas, checking for rapidly ascending and descending aircraft will be very important. Birds are always a concern when it comes to propellers too. And if used in a city up and down drafts created by large buildings like skyscrapers will provide a large controls problem, let’s hope those controllers can reliably handle impulse forces.

    • yogurt@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      9 months ago

      Helicopters can autorotate, if quadcopters lose power they tumble with no control at all