HAMPTON, Va. - Instead of waiting in Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel traffic, imagine that you could just fly to the other side of the water.
Engineers at NASA Langley Research Center are working to make the future...reality, and sooner than expected.
“It’s been estimated by some that it would be 25 years to fly an ubercar. We’re trying to make it more like five years," said Lou Glaab, who leads NASA Langley's High Density Vertiplex (HDV) program. "You need to have a whole lot of aircraft to be able to support that type of demand and that exceeds our capabilities right now, our current air traffic management system.”
Meaning there would be too many flying cars to make that kind of travel safe for people in the air and on the ground.
That's where Glaab and his team come in.
Since 2020, they've been flying smaller drones in a series of tests and research to see how they fly together in a small area and the best ways to keep the space safe.
It's a small-scale version of a future where a high number of air taxis may be flying around a city or what's called a "vertiport."
"Some field could be a heliport," said Glaab, referring to space where a helicopter takes off. "What happens if we're putting a hundred vehicles per hour into that particular piece of ground?"
That's the idea of a vertiport, he says. How would air traffic controllers adjust? The Air Traffic Operations Lab at Langley is practicing for that kind of scenario as the drones are flown outside.
Glaab, who's worked at Langley for 37 years, says his team is nearing the end of a second batch of tests and research to be published and then delivered to the Federal Aviation Adminstration.
The hope is when the research is finished in the next several years, it could open the door to uncrewed air taxis taking people from city to city or to a restaurant for dinner, and then back home.
“Imagine in the future, some number of years from now, you can hail a flying ubercar and be able to fly over traffic," he said.
In the meantime, Langley is already partnering with the city of Hampton, Hampton University and others to find new uses for drones, like keeping an eye on local waters.
“Just to put cameras and be able to monitor what’s happening in areas is very powerful," said Glaab. ”Delivering medical supplies, things like that, could be possible to boaters in distress.”
It's a new world...where the future might arrive sooner than expected.
