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submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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.

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[-] gregorum@lemm.ee 23 points 1 year ago

Autonomous cars are barely working. How the hell is this a good idea?

[-] TwinHaelix@reddthat.com 39 points 1 year ago

To be clear, I definitely agree that this is a bad idea.

However, one of the hardest things about making autonomous cars work is avoiding traffic and pedestrians. If air traffic control can be managed such that these avoid other aircraft (and things like buildings and cell towers, obviously) I could actually see this as easier to get the software working.

[-] AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year 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 10 points 1 year ago

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

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this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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