this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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The thing is, driving a flying car isn't going to be like driving a ground car. It'll be like flying an autonomous drone, like a DJI drone, which is easy and has lots of safety features. You tell it to take off, and it takes off and hovers. You tell it to go up, and it goes up, and then stays at the height it stopped at. You try to go somewhere you're not allowed, like another "lane", and it will be like hitting an invisible pillow. (This happens with DJI drones at restricted airspace boundaries.) There is an auto-land feature, and an auto "Return To Home" feature. The driver (pilot) doesn't have to balance the vehicle, or deal with complex controls, or compensate for wind, because those are all handled by software that interfaces with the flight controller, GPS, and other hardware. It's similar to using an Xbox controller, and it's way, way easier than autonomous ground cars.
I'm not saying there aren't significant risks, but piloting the vehicle is probably one of the least concerning problems.
I worked at a self driving car startup for three years and we all thought flying cars would be easier.
Imagine having to work out self driving in 3D traffic though. I guess at least you won't have pedestrians, mostly.
Obstacle identification and avoidance, and route planning in a dynamic environment are some of the biggest challenges with autonomous ground cars. In the sky, you don't have bicyclists and delivery truck drivers stopped in the lane, and stuff like that. Even DJI drones can fly around trees and buildings. Again though, it's not that there's no risk, but the problems aren't nearly as difficult to solve.
In cars, you perform SLAM, simultaneous localization and mapping. In the sky, SLAM is way easier.
Aren't other flying cars going to be the dynamic part of the environment? Is what I'm asking
Sure, but we can expect that they will be communicating with each other in a RemoteID kind of way, but with additional information like up to date location and intended motion vector. Also, air traffic is already divided up into different heights for different directions.
Yeah true, I guess if you can enforce that as a standard there's already tons of research on swarming behaviour with drones to work with.
Sure, with 10 competing standards from 10 different companies that don't communicate with each other.
FAA has authority over every outdoor flying vehicle above ground level. I doubt there will be competing standards. RemoteID has been an awful rollout with a lot of miscommunication, but afaik there was never problems with incompatibility. (I'd actually love to see the standard spec) Airplanes already send out their location, been doing it for years. You can use an SDR to listen in on existing airplane beacons and map them on your computer.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140118233412/http://www.richardosgood.com/blog/2014/01/14/track-airplanes-with-rtl-sdr-and-ads-b
It's a good thing that birds aren't real, and already have RemoteID built-in.