Dubai’s autonomous flying taxis will launch in the emirate in five years, a senior official in the emirate’s Road and Transport Authority (RTA) said on Sunday.
Last month Dubai staged a test for what will become the world’s first flying taxi, according to Reuters.
The flying taxi was developed by German drone firm Volocopter. On Sunday, a flying taxi – a white-coloured machine that looked like a small, two-seater helicopter - was shown at the RTA’s stand at Dubai’s annual Gitex Technology Week exhibition at the Dubai World Trade Centre.
“We have started experiments in Germany since 2013, those were the initial experiments and there were others in the beginning of 2017 that lasted for around a month… The experiments made us assured about the readiness of the vehicle,” Khaled Al Awadhi, director of RTA’s Automated Collection System (ACS) –the authority in charge of the flying taxis operations - told Zawya in an interview on the sidelines of the Gitex exhibition on Sunday.
“The plan is to continue with all the preparations for around five coming years,” he added. When asked if that meant that the official launch of the flying taxis in Dubai will take place within five years, AlAwadhi said: “Yes”.
AlAwadhi said that the RTA is still working on setting the fees, legislation and potential locations of the flying taxis in Dubai.
“We are working with General Civil Aviation Authority to come up with new legislations that would fit the new transportation,” AlAwadhi said.
The RTA official said that although the new service will use an expensive technology, it remains a cheaper alternative to building new infrastructure for regular, on-ground transport such as metros, trams and trains.
But the new innovation also faces a hurdle, according to AlAwadhi – potential fears from users of travelling in an unmanned aircraft.
“The aerial vehicles being new and also autonomous could scare people away and that is why at the beginning, we will have a transition period and have a specialised person in the vehicles until people get assured and feel comfortable to use the autonomous ones,” AlAwadhi said.
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