Uber's Vertical Take-off And Landing Technology Updates: Company Hires NASA's Flying Car Engineer

The mostly used taxi hiring app Uber has been expanding so fast since its launch. Uber has earned a good amount of popularity with users just because the fares are generally cheaper than the traditional taxi.

According to BBC, The ride-hailing company first signaled its interest in short-range "vertical take-off and landing" technology. For this, Uber has reaffirmed its flying cars ambition by hiring former NASA engineer Mark Moore.

Moore has a brisk experience of 30 years of working at NASA and becomes the director of engineering for aviation at "Uber Elevate". He published a white paper on "Vertical Take-off and Landing" vehicle's (VTOL) back in 2010 for "on-demand aviation" to transform the daily commute.

That research inspired Google co-founder Larry Page to finance Silicon Valley start-up Zee Aero and Kitty Hawk, which aimed to develop VTOL technology further. The Uber-Elevate has a future in which consumers can take a regular Uber ride to a 'vertiport', where flying cars would be able to transport them to another 'vertiport' located near their office.

Moore believes flying cars companies will have to negotiate with suppliers in order to make the vehicle affordable. Also, campaign for regulators to relax air traffic restrictions. The Verge reported that Mr.Moore's research has explored how advances in robotics, autonomous systems, and electric propulsion can facilitate new kinds of small aircraft.

Uber continues to see its role as a catalyst to the growing developing VTOL ecosystem. In his LinkedIn profile, Mr.Moore said his research into the unmanned aerial system and personal air vehicles had the potential to "facilitate a change in aviation that within the next 20 years could be quite breath-taking in terms of impact and market cap".

In a research paper, he published while at NASA he explained a zero emission, highly efficient, highly reliable, ultra low noise VTOL capability would be a game changer compared with existing close proximity flight capabilities, for both unmanned and manned application. Uber is already investing in self-driving cars striking partnership with Volvo and Daimler, as well as autonomous trucks through last year's acquisition of Otto.