Skip to main content

Intel drone chief, Anil Nanduri, predicts flying cars in five years

CNET spoke with Intel Drone Chief, Anil Nanduri about flying cars, flying taxis, and drones at the All About Autonomy 2019 conference. Here are a few of the highlights of the article.

Interview with Intel drone chief, Anil Nanduri

Stephen Shankland from CNET spoke with Intel Drone Chief, Anil Nanduri. Here are some of the highlights of that interview.

Anil Nanduri, general manager of Intel’s drone group, expects drones to be shuttling people to work over the heads of drivers stuck in traffic below. And that “flying cars will transform from exotic to accepted in the next few years.”

Shankland: You get a half an hour of battery life out of little camera drones weighing 100 grams. What about when it’s 100 kilograms of human payload?

Nanduri: You hit on the biggest challenge. If you look at the physics of a multirotor system, no matter what size and scale, you’re going to have 30 to 45 minutes of battery life with existing battery technology. With a larger drone, you can put more battery in it, but you’re carrying more weight. That’s why people are looking at hybrid EVTOL [electric vertical takeoff and landing] systems. They can take advantage of the aerodynamics of tilt-rotor designs. Once you are in flight, you’re more like a traditional aircraft, but then you’re able to take off and land vertically. That has its own challenges, so you see a lot of innovation to extend your flight time.

Shankland: Even little tiny quadcopters can get pretty noisy. If you’re talking about something big enough to lift a human being or big Amazon packages, with multiple flights a day to your neighbors’ houses, that really adds up.

Nanduri: It’s all social acceptance and social perception that’s going to drive it. It’s more important as they come into the urban, high-density areas. But is it really the loudness? You’ll be surprised — sometimes it’s the frequency of the sound.

Shankland: Does “social acceptance” translate to “better get used to it”?

Nanduri: No! There is technology that will help make them quieter. If it’s a frequency problem, it’s how the rotors are designed that gives you the changes in the frequency tones. There’s research going on as to how I can make them more human friendly. These things become barriers to adoption. But at end of the day, the social acceptance comes down to value. If people see value, then they’re willing to deal with some of the irritating aspects that come as part of that.

You can read the entire interview here.

STAY IN TOUCH!

If you’d like to stay up to date with all the latest drone news, scoops, rumors and reviews, then follow us on TwitterFacebookYouTubeInstagram or sign up for our daily email newsletter, that goes out every weekday at 6 pm.

Buy your next drone through directly from manufacturers, such as DJIParrotYuneec or retailers like AmazonB&HBestBuy or eBay. By using our links, we will make a small commission, but it will not cost you anything extra. Thank you for helping DroneDJ grow!

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

You’re reading DroneDJ — experts who break news about DJI and the wider drone ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow DroneDJ on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Comments

Author

Avatar for Haye Kesteloo Haye Kesteloo

Haye Kesteloo is the Editor in Chief and Main Writer at DroneDJ, where he covers all drone related news and writes product reviews. He also contributes to the other sites in the 9to5Mac group such as; 9to5Mac, 9to5Google, 9to5Toys and Electrek. Haye can be reached at haye@dronedj.com or @hayekesteloo