NASA and Uber Connect to Develop Flying Car Network

As part of NASA’s Urban Air Mobility (UAM) project, the government agency has partnered with ridesharing firm, Uber, to study the development of a traffic network to facilitate flying cars.

Focused on low-flying personal and public vehicles as well as package-delivery drones, the UAM seeks ways to manage the logistics of handling VTOL vehicles as part of NASA’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management (UTM) initiative to make personal air travel possible.

In a statement NASA said, “The teams at Ames and at Uber will connect their computer systems and run through different scenarios that UAM operators could encounter. One focuses on coordinating scheduling of different flights prior to takeoff, for example; another on coordinating different elements of an emergency landing situation.”

The partnership is expected to pave the way for UberAir, Uber’s urban ridesharing project. The work is being conducted at NASA’s Ames Research Facility in Silicon Valley.