{"id":29099,"date":"2016-08-19T00:47:05","date_gmt":"2016-08-19T07:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/airbus-reveals-ambitious-plan-for-autonomous-flying-taxis"},"modified":"2017-06-04T09:55:48","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T16:55:48","slug":"airbus-reveals-ambitious-plan-for-autonomous-flying-taxis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/airbus-reveals-ambitious-plan-for-autonomous-flying-taxis","title":{"rendered":"Airbus reveals ambitious plan for autonomous flying taxis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/airbus-reveals-ambitious-plan-for-autonomous-flying-taxis.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>If a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2016\/06\/07\/passenger-drone-gets-permission-for-us-flight-tests\/\">self-flying taxi<\/a> scheme didn\u2019t come from the world\u2019s second largest aeronautical company, we might think it was a prank. However, Airbus appears to be serious about its \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.airbusgroup.com\/int\/en\/news-media\/corporate-magazine\/Forum-88\/My-Kind-Of-Flyover.html\">Vahana<\/a>\u201d project, aimed at creating an autonomous passenger drone network, and thinks testing can begin as early as 2017. That sounds ambitious, to say the least, but \u201cmany of the technologies needed, such as batteries, motors and avionics are most the way there,\u201d according to Airbus engineer Rodin Lyasoff.<\/p>\n<p>Users arriving at, say, an airport would book a seat on a so-called zenHop \u201cCityAirbus\u201d drone, then proceed to a \u201czenHub\u201d helipad, according to the concept. They\u2019d be flown to their destination for about the same cost as a taxi, since the ride would be shared by several passengers. Luggage would be delivered by another service (zenLuggage, of course), and the whole thing would be safeguarded from hackers by (wait for it) zenCyber.<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" data-credit=\"Airbus\" data-mep=\"1319683\" src=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/airbus-reveals-ambitious-plan-for-autonomous-flying-taxis2.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2016\/08\/18\/airbus-reveals-ambitious-plan-for-autonomous-flying-taxis\/\">https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2016\/08\/18\/airbus-reveals-ambitious...ing-taxis\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If a self-flying taxi scheme didn\u2019t come from the world\u2019s second largest aeronautical company, we might think it was a prank. However, Airbus appears to be serious about its \u201cVahana\u201d project, aimed at creating an autonomous passenger drone network, and thinks testing can begin as early as 2017. That sounds ambitious, to say the least, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":354,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1488,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drones","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29099"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60726,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29099\/revisions\/60726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}