Will air taxis and passenger drones bring the next revolution in mobility? AI pioneer Sebastian Thrun, CEO of Kitty Hawk, believes that autonomous flying vehicles may well be the best way to “free the world from traffic, once and forever.” In this DLD20 talk Thrun lays out the benefits of moving through the air – in a sustainable, environmentally friendly way.
As a Stanford researcher Thrun pioneered the development of self-driving cars. However, despite the safety and economic benefits that self-driving automobiles would provide, Thrun and his team were continuously confronted with one major problem: traffic.
On the ground there’s no way around it. But what about utilizing the third dimension? “If we could drive cars that went 500 meters in the air, we could rid the world of traffic”, he explains. What’s more, travel time would be drastically reduced. In the near future, Thrun hopes, urban taxis will become a reality. “Instead of driving to work you will fly to work”, he predicts.
