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China just approved flying taxis – no pilot needed

(engineerine.com)
78 points JumpCrisscross | 1 comments | 12 Apr 25 18:22 UTC | HN request time: 0.202s | source
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not_your_vase ◴[12 Apr 25 18:30 UTC] No.43666830[source]▶
I definitely don't want to belittle the achievement, but I would imagine that creating safe self-driving helicopters is much easier than creating safe self-driving cars. (At least as long as the skies are just as empty as they are today. Once it's full of things like the roads, that will be a different topic)
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pryelluw ◴[12 Apr 25 18:44 UTC] No.43666943[source]▶
Can you expand on how you reason it would be easier?
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theamk ◴[12 Apr 25 19:00 UTC] No.43667042[source]▶
Self-driving car senses objects and must make difficult decisions: Is this radar reflection from stationary light pole or from a moving object? Is this a parked car or a moving car? Will this pedestrain/biker jump on the roadway? What if the car next to me going to turn left sharply?

No such thing exists in the air. The air is mostly empty, there are no stationary objects next to the route. If there is a building, aircraft can fly as far as 500 meters away from it - try finding a driveable road with no obstacles at that distance. There is no people or large animals. There is not even curb to hit.

Importantly, I bet there are no legacy vehicles in the approved routes - and I am sure they will have some sort of V2V tech to ensure that all objects in the air will transmit their position and intention.

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NoahKAndrews ◴[13 Apr 25 05:46 UTC] No.43670395[source]▶
Airplanes already broadcast their position! It's called ADS-B.
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ablob ◴[13 Apr 25 11:56 UTC] No.43672105[source]▶
Not every airplane does that. Commercial planes mostly do, but its not mandated under all circumstances as far as I know. (Speaking for my region only)
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cynical_spar ◴[13 Apr 25 13:04 UTC] No.43672515[source]▶
All commercial planes have it at this point. And most part 91 airplanes (General Aviation) have it at this point. Without ADSB you cannot fly in or near class A, B, or C airspace and must stay below 10,000 feet. Which largely makes having an airplane useless for most people.

There are still airplanes flying that have no electrical system but even then some of them have retrofitted a system.

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1. ablob ◴[13 Apr 25 13:28 UTC] No.43672667[source]▶
I was answering with the purposes of flight-taxis in mind. I doubt that they will fly in high altitude and deem it quite likely that they might want to pass uncontrolled airspace at some point. And if you're flying in uncontrolled airspace you just can't count on the presence of it. In fact, missing transponders are an occasional source of accidents in these spaces. There are lots of gliding enthusiasts that aren't equipped.

P.S.: Commercial planes (esp. big ones) should have hardly any contact points with flying taxis.