The sky taxis with no pilots

[00:00.40] You know the feeling. You’re stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. It’s going to be hours before you get home.

[00:07.04] As we know all too well, congestion is one of the downsides of modern city living.

[00:12.62] Don’t you wish you could just take to the skies and soar above it all in a helicopter?

[00:17.93] Well, wish no more. Right now, the race is on to release the first commercially viable sky taxi.

[00:25.10] No longer will personal air travel be the preserve of the super wealthy, say optimistic tech entrepreneurs.

[00:32.27] There’s just one catch: how do you feel about having no pilot?

[00:37.32] For brave passengers, the city of Dubai plans to roll out rides on their pilotless drone taxi project by the end of this year.

[00:45.29] You can buckle up and share the ride with one other passenger in their 18-rotor craft, developed by German start-up Volocopter, with a top speed of 100km/h and a flight time of around 30 minutes.

[00:58.83] If you have more friends, French aviation company Airbus are working on a drone which can carry four to six customers.

[01:06.27] Or if you prefer your own company, Chinese firm Ehang are pioneering a single-seater drone, which stays airborne for 23 minutes.

[01:15.30] Ride-hailing company Uber also want a piece of the action. They say drones like this are the “future of on-demand urban air transportation”.

[01:24.60] They recently poached NASA chief technologist Mark Moore to help them develop a drone taxi.

[01:30.45] And he claims it won’t cost the earth. Moore told the BBC that with three or four passengers sharing, it would be “very similar to what an UberX [car] costs today”.

[01:41.07] So far so good. But naturally, a number of questions remain.

[01:45.58] On the technical side, there’s the problem of batteries.

[01:49.04] A 23-minute flight could get you across town, but how and where does the battery recharge?

[01:54.88] And regulations are a challenge too. US authorities require aircraft to carry at least 20 minutes of spare fuel.

[02:02.58] If you only have 23 or even 30 in total, that leaves very little leeway. Control of access to flight paths will also need to be worked out.

[02:12.68] Even if these issues are tackled successfully, there’s still the biggie: safety.

[02:17.99] Will passengers really be willing to put their lives in the hands of a flying robot?

[02:23.57] Winning the trust of the regulators and the public may take time. But when they do, well, the sky’s the limit.