Urban mobility is a fancy term to describe how the bustling infrastructure of modern cities. Airbus reportedly has an equally fancy solution how to solve the congestion with mesmerizing technology.
Aviation production and manufacturing company Airbus, renowned for its amazing patents, has unveiled plans to revolutionize transportation within major cities. In a blog post entitled "Future of Urban Mobility," Airbus details how it might squire travelers around town using flying taxis.
The post first notes that by 2030, 60 percent of the world's population will reside within the confines of urban areas, representing a 10 percent increase from where people live today. Congestion and traffic, it would seem, are about to get far worse.
The solution may be for everyone for stay indoors weeping from the prospect of encountering a backlog of commuters; or, according to Airbus, flying, autonomous transports of the future.
The job goes to Airbus' Silicon Valley installation, A3, which aims for 2017 as the year it will test the initial throes of Vahana - a flying solution to eons of traffic conundrums for individuals and cargo.
Rodin Lyasoff is A3's project executive and explains the feasibility of such an endeavor, via Airbus Group: "Many of the technologies needed, such as batteries, motors and avionics are most of the way there."
The above image represents an artist's interpretation of what the CityAirbus might look like.
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We have long desired flying cars that might offer transportation we have only enjoyed in movies and TV shows.
Airbus Group CEO Tom Enders offers that we might tweak our expectations to first welcome something similar in the form of large taxis that take autonomous transport to new heights: "I'm no big fan of Star Wars, but it's not crazy to imagine that one day our big cities will have flying cars making their way along roads in the sky. In a not too distant future, we'll use our smartphones to book a fully automated flying taxi that will land outside our front door - without any pilot."
The remarkable part and the major takeaway is a flying solution that will whisk you away in sci-fi style.
The blog post also promises luxury at relatively low cost in the form of a multi-passenger solution. What it calls zenHOP taxis might be available for taki-like prices, because it imagines myriad travelers will board the aerial transport aimed for the same destination.
As the post states, "As a result, the flight costs no more than a taxi ride."
This kind of technology is still a ways off. But the amazing thing is that the time frame is possibly years instead of decades as Airbus hopes to have something in place in 10 years' time.
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