NASA contracts Uber to build flying taxi air control
software
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[November 08, 2017]
By Eric Auchard
LISBON (Reuters) - Uber has struck a deal
with NASA to develop software for managing "flying taxi" routes in the
air along the lines of ride-hailing services it has pioneered on the
ground, the company said on Wednesday.
And in this case, it’s working hard to stay on regulators' good side.
Uber said it was the first formal services contract by the U.S. National
Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) covering low-altitude
airspace rather than outer space. NASA has used such contracts to
develop rockets since the late 1950s.
Chief Product Officer Jeff Holden also said Uber would begin testing
four-passenger, 200-miles-per-hour (322-km-per-hour) flying taxi
services across Los Angeles in 2020, its second test market after
Dallas/Fort Worth.
Holden is set to reveal the company's latest air taxi plans at Web
Summit, an annual internet conference taking place in Lisbon this week.
"There is a reality that Uber has grown up a lot as a company," Holden
said in an interview ahead of his speech. "We are now a major company on
the world stage and you can't do things the same way where you are a
large-scale, global company that you can do when you are a small,
scrappy startup."
Uber has faced endless regulatory and legal battles around the world
since it launched its ride-hailing services earlier this decade,
including a recent showdown in London, where it is battling to retain
its license after having been stripped of it by city regulators over
safety concerns. [nL8N1MO228]
The company is looking to speed development of a new industry of
electric, on-demand, urban air taxis, Holden said, which customers could
order up via smartphone in ways that parallel the ground-based taxi
alternatives it has popularized while expanding into more than 600 cites
since 2011.
The company plans to introduce paid, intra-city flying taxi services
from 2023 and is working closely with aviation regulators in the United
States and Europe to win regulatory approvals toward that end, a senior
Uber executive told Reuters.
"We are very much embracing the regulatory bodies and starting very
early in discussions about this and getting everyone aligned with the
vision," he said of Uber's plans to introduce what he called
"ride-sharing in the sky".
Earlier this year, Uber hired NASA veterans Mark Moore and Tom Prevot to
run, respectively, its aircraft vehicle design team and its air traffic
management software program.
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Tourists take pictures of a NASA sign at the Kennedy Space Center
visitors complex in Cape Canaveral, Florida April 14, 2010.
REUTERS/Carlos Barria
During a 32-year career at NASA, Moore pioneered its electric jet propulsion
project which Uber considers to be the core technology for making urban air
transportation possible.
MAKING TAXIS FLY
The contract with NASA is to solve the problem of operating hundreds or
thousands of aircraft over urban areas with the goal of enabling uberAIR
services to operate alongside existing air traffic control systems and in and
around busy airports.
NASA was not immediately available to comment on the deal. Earlier this month it
said it was working with a variety of companies, large and small, to develop the
emerging market for what it terms Urban Air Mobility, or UAM.
Uber envisions a fleet of electric jet-powered vehicles - part helicopter, part
drone and part fixed-wing aircraft - running multiple small rotors capable of
both vertical take off and landing and rapid horizontal flight.
Two larger rotors used to lift the plane transition during flight into
forward-thrusting propellers in newly released designs.
It plans to build no aircraft itself.
Instead, Uber is building the software to manage networks in the sky of flying
taxis, while relying on a stable of manufacturers, including Aurora Flight
Sciences, which was acquired by Boeing <BA.N> last month.
Uber has also signed up Embraer <EMBR3.SA>, Mooney, Bell Helicopter - a unit of
Textron <TXT.N> -, and Pipistrel Aircraft to build new vertical takeoff and
landing aircraft.
It is also working with real estate developers Sandstone Properties in Los
Angeles to build rooftop landing pads on skyscrapers from which it aims to offer
its uberAIR services. It plans to start offering services from locations near a
downtown sports arena, the international airport, Santa Monica and Sherman Oaks
in suburban San Fernando Valley, the company said.
(Reporting by Eric Auchard; Editing by Maria Sheahan and Mark Potter)
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