Air Taxi las Vegas

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Volocopter's taxi flies for the first in the USA.

Whether or not you believe that "flying cars" will be a legitime way of getting around, there is no doubt that all over the globe humans are in love wit the concept. Intel therefore concluded its speech at this year's cycle with an 18-rotor air taxi prototyp es (Octadecacopter?), the so-called Volocopter VC200, even if it only flew over the scene for a short time.

The Volocopter is not quite a "flying car", but a "gigantic UAV in which you can sit". Even if you put that aside, the business is involved in an on-going struggle with Nvidia that extends across a large number of technology, many of which move futuristically.

Volocopter VC200 prototyping at Saturday's CES 2018 Berlin Air Show for Intel's CES 2018 race series. The Intel did not select Volocopter from a file labeled "buzzy vertically take-off and landing start-ups". Volocopter 1X has a 30 minute flying duration and a 17 mile max cruising distance, although Volocopter says the battery can be changed quickly to balance these numbers until technology is improved.

Volocopter blocked an $30 million capital expenditure by Daimler last summers; a few month later, the firm signed a multi-year agreement with Dubai's public transportation operator to test its air taxi system. However, a few years ago Volocopter was interested in using the air traffic controller that had been designed by a firm named Ascending Technologies.

Ascending Technologies - co-founded by Stumpf - was purchased by Intel and this opened a trail to Volocopter. Volocopter 1X, the company's first try to build a serial flight taxi. The Intel is working on and with countless UAVs, but it saw Volocopter as a way to test this on a much larger scale, says Anil Nanduri, the UAV group's VP and General Executive.

Nobody will want to get into a volocopter if there's a slight possibility it will fall down. The Volocopter, for example, uses four Im Uni or four motion blocks that continuously detect and define the position of the car during air travel. Worse still, there's a balistic chute in the tip of the Volocopter that unfolds and lets the air taxi and its occupants go back to the floor safely.

Reuter, Stumpf and Nanduri all say that electrical engine engineering also makes the Volocopter much simpler to use. Emerging air taxi markets are inundated with big-name companies such as Uber and Airbus, and Volocopter is not the only start-up to bring in billions of US dollar in cash. The collaboration with Intel will help Volocopter to face these rivals side by side, says Reuter.

Concerning Intel, Volocopter's trip ended at the end of a more than one-hour speech in which Krzanich spoke at length about the peculiarities of other partnership deals revolving around autonomic automobiles, virtuality and AI. Volocopters could be a spring in Intel's bonnet in the future, but their cooling effect can only help so much to alter the way this cumbersome technology giant is perceived.