A contraption that looked like a slick motorcycle with propellers lifted several feet off the ground
The vehicle hovered in the air, over a netted area, for four minutes.
The decades-old dream of zipping around in the sky as simply as driving on highways may be becoming less illusory.
Japan’s SkyDrive, among the myriads of “flying car” projects around the world, has carried out a successful though modest test flight with one person aboard.
In a video shown to reporters on Friday, a contraption that looked like a slick motorcycle with propellers lifted several feet off the ground, and hovered in a netted area for four minutes.
China’s largest delivery company completed its first autonomous cargo drone flight
SF Holdings wants plane-size cargo drones to deliver goods to rural areas in China.
Companies around the world are building unmanned civilian aircraft for the freight business
Using small drones to deliver packages straight to your door isn’t a new idea: businesses from Amazon to UPS are already experimenting with the technology. But now the company that owns China’s largest express delivery service is taking the concept further.
SF Holdings said it successfully completed a trial of the country’s first unmanned cargo flight in northwest China last Friday. Unlike some companies that are testing small delivery drones to drop off a single package at nearby locations, SF’s aircraft is said to be capable of flying longer with a payload of up to 1.5 tonnes.
The giant drone is designed to reach a maximum flight distance of 1,200km at a speed of 180km per hour. On Friday, it flew nearly an hour from the mountainous region of Ningxia to Inner Mongolia.
This puts autonomous delivery into a different category from what many other companies have been working on. Amazon revealed last year that its Prime Air drone can fly up to 24km and deliver a package that weighs a little more than 2kg.
The final round of DARPA’s AlphaDogfight Trial is complete, and once again, the winning AI pilot celebrated its victory against a field of virtual contenders by going on to defeat a human F-16 pilot. An AI pilot developed by Heron Systems won the shootout, defeating a fellow AI from Lockheed.
EHANG 184 AAV Manned Flight Test by EHANG CEO Mr. Hu Huazhi
A new forecast for passenger drones and the eVTOL aircraft market predicts dramatic growth over the next 10 years.
According to the new market research report from MarketsandMarkets on the “eVTOL Aircraft Market … Global Forecast to 2030”, the eVTOL aircraft market is projected to grow from USD 162 million in 2025 to USD 411 million by 2030, at a CAGR of 20.42% from 2025 to 2030.
Will New Hampshire suddenly look like GTA 5? No, but the state’s ready to let them hit the road legally.
This is the Switchblade, which was supposed to arrive last year.
We’ve been promised flying cars for seemingly decades, and although we still don’t have one ready for production, New Hampshire has gone ahead and given them the OK.
On Wednesday, the Granite State passed House Bill 1182, aka the “Jetson Bill,” into law, and the transportation bill includes a prevision that makes flying cars legal on public roads. There aren’t any to hit the roads today, but it’s a future forward gesture, I suppose.
A reversible middle seat means airlines can maintain their passenger capacity. Avio Interiors
The coronavirus has caused a significant drop in air travel.
Despite masks being mandatory on most major airlines, and sanitation and hygiene practices being stepped up, designers have come up with their own ways to ensure safer air travel.
One 3D-printed product from design firm Teague would attach to the vents above seats to push passengers’ breath down, described on its company’s website as “an invisible germ isolation unit.”
Another design firm, Haeco, sees a future in which passengers share the airplane cabin with cargo, allowing for more space between people.
Virgin Galactic is making strides toward its goal of creating high-speed commercial aircraft that operates a little closer to Earth than its existing passenger spacecraft. The company revealed the initial design of the commercial passenger airplane it’s creating that’s designed to fly at speeds in excess of Mach 3 — faster than the average cruising speed of around Mach 2 that the original Concorde achieved.
This concept design comes alongside a new partnership for Virgin Galactic, by way of a memorandum of understanding that the company signed with Rolls-Royce, one of the world’s leading aircraft engine makers. Rolls-Royce is also responsible for the engine of the Concorde, one of the only supersonic commercial aircraft ever used for passenger travel.
CityAirbus is the new eVTOL being developed by Airbus’ helicopter division that aims to set the stage for a new era of intra-city travel with flying taxis.
The futuristic-looking demonstrator can carry four passengers with a range of 60 miles, traveling at 75 miles per hour.
Airbus demonstrated the eVTOL in public for the first time on July 20 during a visit by a German politician to the facility in Bavaria.
Impact of virus threatens industry’s engine of sales, profit
Road warriors turn to video conferences while CEOs eye budgets.
U.S. passenger totals plummeted more than 95% at the peak of the pandemic-related travel collapse.
U.S. airlines hammered by the catastrophic loss of passengers during the pandemic are confronting a once-unthinkable scenario: that this crisis will obliterate much of the corporate flying they’ve relied on for decades to prop up profits.
“It is likely that business travel will never return to pre-Covid levels,” said Adam Pilarski, senior vice president at Avitas, an aviation consultant. “It is one of those unfortunate cases where the industry will be permanently impaired and what we lost now is gone, never to come back.”
Somehow, Skyborg will be an operational weapon system in just three years.
The U.S. Air Force is planning to field an operational combat drone by 2023.
The service says Skyborg will replace older weapon-slinging drones and even early models of the F-16.
Skyborg will be reusable but could be sacrificed in combat if necessary.
The U.S. Air Force plans to have an operational combat drone by 2023. The service plans to build out a family of unmanned aircraft, known as Skyborg, capable of carrying weapons and actively participating in combat. The Air Force’s goal is to build up a large fleet of armed, sort-of disposable jets that don’t need conventional runways to take off and land.
Hyundai Motor Group via The Korea Herald/Asia News Network
SEOUL — South Korea aims to commercialize urban air mobility (UAM) services in the domestic market in 2025 as it strives to tackle worsening traffic congestion in major cities, the transport ministry said Thursday.
The government plans to begin offering UAM services initially with one to two routes, or terminals, in the Seoul metropolitan area in 2025 and then to increase the number of terminals to 10 by 2030, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said in a statement.
So far, Uber is sticking publicly to its stated goal of beginning limited aerial ridesharing service in its pilot cities by 2023. And at least one of its vehicle partners, Joby Aviation, remains committed to certifying and operating its electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) air taxi by 2023.
The U.S. Air Force’s Agility Prime program, which is intended to help accelerate the certification of commercial eVTOL vehicles by providing access to testing resources and a government early-adopter market, is likewise targeting the fielding of a “small handful” of vehicles in 2023.
Uber planned to conduct flight tests on an experimental vehicle over a U.S. city later in 2020 but has not provided an update on whether the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted these plans. These flights, of a piloted vehicle without passengers, are intended to demonstrate the low noise of eVTOL vehicles, which is critical to achieving the public acceptance needed to begin commercial service.
