A year after revealing an autonomous passenger drone, Guangzhou-based Ehang could stage the first public demonstration later this year in China or the United Arab Emirates, co-founder Derrick Xiong says at the Airventure fly-in event on 25 July.
The experimental Ehang 814 is controlled like an autonomous drone with waypoints selected on a tablet computer, but the vehicle carries a human passenger. That makes it part of the vanguard of a start-ups and conventional aerospace companies chasing the long-term potential of autonomous flight controls for passenger-carrying aircraft.
So far, Ehang has performed thousands of flights of the octorotor vehicle since first flight in 2015, but none have been viewed in real time by the public. That could change later this year, Xiong says.
“We couldn’t fly this time here in Oshkosh, but you’re definitely going to see us fly in some other parts of the world pretty soon,” he says. “I’d say this year.”
The demonstration could be staged in either China or Dubai, the two locations that have supported the vehicles development the most. Although the Dubai air show is scheduled in November, it does not appear to be a candidate to host the demonstration. The first public viewing of the Ehang 814 in flight would likely be a “special event just for us”, Xiong says.
The public demonstration is part of a long-term plan to continue learning about the autonomous control technology. Neither the industry nor regulators yet understand how to certificate passenger-carrying aircraft controlled at all times by software algorithms instead of pilot commands.
But Ehang’s development team is making progress. There were crashes in the first stages of testing, but more recently the algorithms have proved reliable, Xiong says. Ehang displayed new videos at Airventure, revealing the vehicle on a test flight that includes several directional changes, hovering and landing.
“The first thing we need to do is prove to ourselves -- prove that this product is actually the most technically ready product in the market in this very niche area,” Xiong says. “We need to make everyone believe that this is the product that’s good enough to be sold.”
Source: FlightGlobal.com
