[House Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
URBAN AIR MOBILITY_ARE FLYING CARS
READY FOR TAKE-OFF?
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 24, 2018
__________
Serial No. 115-71
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
30-881 PDF WASHINGTON : 2019
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office,
http://bookstore.gpo.gov. For more information, contact the GPO Customer Contact Center,
U.S. Government Publishing Office. Phone 202-512-1800, or 866-512-1800 (toll-free).
E-mail, [email protected].
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
DANA ROHRABACHER, California ZOE LOFGREN, California
MO BROOKS, Alabama DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
BILL POSEY, Florida AMI BERA, California
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
RANDY K. WEBER, Texas MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
STEPHEN KNIGHT, California DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia
BRIAN BABIN, Texas JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania
BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia JERRY McNERNEY, California
RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado
GARY PALMER, Alabama PAUL TONKO, New York
DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida BILL FOSTER, Illinois
ANDY BIGGS, Arizona MARK TAKANO, California
ROGER W. MARSHALL, Kansas COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii
NEAL P. DUNN, Florida CHARLIE CRIST, Florida
CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana
RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina
DEBBIE LESKO, Arizona
MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas
C O N T E N T S
July 24, 2018
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Lamar Smith, Chairman, Committee on
Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.. 4
Written Statement............................................ 7
Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking
Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House
of Representatives............................................. 9
Written Statement............................................ 11
Witnesses:
Dr. Jaiwon Shin, Associate Administrator, Aeronautics Research
Mission Directorate, NASA
Oral Statement............................................... 14
Written Statement............................................ 16
Dr. John-Paul Clarke, College of Engineering Dean's Professor,
Georgia Institute of Technology; Co-chair, 2014 National
Research Council Committee on Autonomy Research for Civil
Aviation
Oral Statement............................................... 25
Written Statement............................................ 27
Dr. Eric Allison, Head of Aviation Programs, Uber
Oral Statement............................................... 34
Written Statement............................................ 51
Mr. Michael Thacker, Executive Vice President, Technology and
Innovation, Bell
Oral Statement............................................... 54
Written Statement............................................ 56
Ms. Anna Mracek Dietrich, Co-Founder and Regulatory Affairs,
Terrafugia
Oral Statement............................................... 67
Written Statement............................................ 69
Discussion....................................................... 85
Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Dr. Jaiwon Shin, Associate Administrator, Aeronautics Research
Mission Directorate, NASA...................................... 110
Dr. John-Paul Clarke, College of Engineering Dean's Professor,
Georgia Institute of Technology; Co-chair, 2014 National
Research Council Committee on Autonomy Research for Civil
Aviation....................................................... 126
Dr. Eric Allison, Head of Aviation Programs, Uber................ 136
Mr. Michael Thacker, Executive Vice President, Technology and
Innovation, Bell............................................... 143
Ms. Anna Mracek Dietrich, Co-Founder and Regulatory Affairs,
Terrafugia..................................................... 150
URBAN AIR MOBILITY--ARE FLYING CARS
READY FOR TAKE-OFF?
----------
TUESDAY, JULY 24, 2018
House of Representatives,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in Room
2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Lamar Smith
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Smith. The Committee on Space, Science, and
Technology will come to order. Without objection, the Chair is
authorized to declare recesses of the Committee at any time.
Good morning, and welcome to today's hearing titled ``Urban
Air Mobility--Are Flying Cars Ready for Take-Off?'' I'll
recognize myself for five minutes for an opening statement, but
before beginning, let me just say that we expect some Members
to arrive shortly. There are both Republican and Democratic
Caucus meetings going on, and as soon as those caucuses are
over, I think that we'll have more Members, although this is a
critical mass up here right now.
I also note the good audience interest. Nice to have
everybody here and with our discussion about such a fascinating
subject. And we welcome our five witnesses as well, and I'll
introduce you in just a minute.
For decades, flying cars have been the object of our
imagination. They represent aspiration, innovation, and freedom
of exploration. The entertainment industry has popularized the
concept in everything from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to The
Jetsons, from Star Wars to Back to the Future.
Let me confess to a couple of things this morning. Several
weeks ago, I was taking a walk at the Mall, and I noticed a
mother with a young son off to the side. It looked like to me
the young son was operating a remote-controlled car, and
suddenly, wings sprouted from the side of the car and the car
took off. This was the first remote-controlled flying car that
I've ever seen in my life. But you have to understand that I've
been collecting articles about flying cars since I was in
elementary school, so I was just absolutely intrigued by what I
saw.
I have to say I immediately sent off for one. I flew it in
Lincoln Park several weeks ago, and it worked wonderfully. The
advantage of this particular remote-controlled car--flying-car
plane--is that it flies so slowly you can sort of you can't do
much about vertical, but that's okay. It goes so slowly, it
doesn't seem to matter.
I also liked it so much that I want to tell Members that I
ordered a number of these flying cars. I know a good thing when
I see it. Every Member who comes to today's hearing is going to
get a flying car, and I am going to show it. This is what the
box looks like, and, more specifically, this is what the car
looks like when the wings have popped out. This can take off in
15 feet. I could've taken it off on the witness table, but I
decided not to because I don't think I could have made the turn
before it hit the wall. And I know what everybody would have
said if that had happened.
So, in any case, as far as the Members go, we'll be
delivering a box to your office sometime today or tomorrow. And
I've also promised these flying car models to all the witnesses
today, we'll just have to figure out how you get it back if
you're not from the DC. area, but we'll figure that out.
By the way, it's always been frustrating to me to be given
a present that required batteries and then no batteries, so I
have purchased batteries. Will get, taped on top of the model,
six AA batteries so that you'll be able to use this car fairly
shortly. Anyway, it will be great fun, and I think you'll enjoy
it.
By the way, if you want to, be sure and let me know how you
did, and if you can do, take a video. Who knows, we may have a
video hearing sometime soon. So, anyway, when the word gets
out, I suspect we'll have a few more Members come as well. They
do have to stay for more than one minute, however.
Let's see. Oh, I want to show you examples of some of these
clippings. These are more recent clippings, but the most recent
clipping was actually--I'm on a plane Friday night flying back
home, and I'm reading The Economist, and in The Economist this
week there is an article on flying cars. It's called a ``James
Bond special,'' which happens to hit two of my personal
interests, both James Bond and the flying cars, but it was in
this week's Economist.
Then, we have a Terrafugia witness today, and I went back
and I have a clipping from 2010 on the plane that I think
you're going to be selling next year. And I was not around at
the time, so I don't want any comments, but back in 1945, do
you recall the store JCPenney? Okay. This is an ad by JCPenney
in 1945, ``buy your plane at Penney's.'' But anyway, it looked
like every family was going to own an airplane back then.
Obviously, it didn't happen, but that's the kind of aspiration
we've had in the United States for--about this subject for a
long, long time. So anyway, you can look at my clips whenever
you want to.
Let's see. Our focus today is on urban air mobility, a
concept that can include delivery drones and personal air
vehicles, as well as cars that can both be driven and flown.
And advances in lithium-ion battery technology, computing
power, and electric propulsion are providing companies with the
tools they need to turn science fiction into science fact. This
is the first Congressional hearing dedicated to the topic of
flying cars.
One company, Terrafugia, says that their vehicle could be
available as soon as next year. It's called the Transition and
can drive like a car, fit into a standard garage, and be flown
in and out of over 5,000 local airports. And Uber has a bold
timeline to make an air-based on-demand transportation system
available to the public in five years. Companies like Bell are
working to design and build the vehicles that will operate on
the network envisioned by Uber.
Autonomous cars, which are impressive and already have been
the subject of Science Committee hearings, don't have the same
benefits as urban air mobility. Traffic and gridlock challenges
are better overcome by cars that fly rather than drive. Flying
cars also have the benefit of enabling emergency vehicles to
reach their destinations faster and provide more mobility
options for those who cannot operate a car.
Although it will be a while before we see widespread
ownership and use of personal vehicles that can both be driven
and flown, these advances are visible on the horizon. As
policymakers, we can examine how we can support such
technological advances while pursuing a safe, reliable, and
efficient regulatory framework.
It occurs to me that we're the first committee in Congress
to have a hearing on flying cars, but remember, we were also
the first committee to have a hearing on drones and several
other subjects as well, so that's one of the things that we are
about in the Science Committee, the future and innovation.
We thank our witnesses for being here today, and I look
forward to the day when I can fly a flying car.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Smith follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Smith. I'll now recognize the Ranking Member Eddie
Bernice Johnson, the gentlewoman from Texas, for her opening
statement.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much. Good morning, and let me
welcome our witnesses. And thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling
this hearing to examine urban air mobility research and
development efforts and the potential benefits and challenges
that might accrue from this exciting new technology.
I might say that in the next five years if you'll come to
Dallas I will make sure that you get a ride in reality.
Stuck in a traffic jam, who among us has never dreamed of
riding a flying car and coming out of that traffic and going--
leaping ahead of everybody? Well, it might be on the way. What
some of us could only dream of after watching episodes of The
Jetsons might actually happen sooner than we think. Indeed, we
will hear today many companies believe that we are in the
threshold of revolutionary changes brought about by a new
generation of vehicles.
A multitude of concepts for vertical takeoff and landing
vehicles, many of them fueled by recent advances in lightweight
electric propulsion and storage capacity, are being proposed
with the goal of providing convenient urban transportation.
Washington, you know, can really use this, too, especially
where I have to go and come from home.
If proven to be safe, such concepts could result in
changing the way goods are delivered and people move around. In
turn, the innovation generated by UAM may result not only in
creating new jobs but also enhancing the productivity of
workers in existing jobs.
But as with any new technology, there are challenges to its
implementation. This calls for thoughtful examination. A panel
established by the National Academies found in 2014 that,
increasingly, autonomous aircraft pose serious questions about
how they will be safely and efficiently integrated into the
existing civil aviation structure.
As defined by the panel, a fully autonomous aircraft would
not require a pilot. The aircraft would be able to operate
independently within civil airspace, interacting with air-
traffic controllers and other pilots, just as if a human pilot
were on board and in command.
In addition to technological barriers such as accurately
predicting the behavior of systems that can adapt to changing
conditions, a feature critical in autonomous aircraft,
widespread operation of UAS systems will also require
resolution of applicable regulatory and certification
requirements. Regulations are needed to ensure that vehicles
can operate in airspace above cities without negatively
impacting safety. In addition, certification and safety
requirements for these type of vehicles would need to be
developed.
Finally, a major challenge will be integrating UAM
operations into the national airspace. In that regard, we are
fortunate that we can leverage NASA's work on the unmanned
aircraft system, or the UAS, traffic management to get a head
start examining the issue.
Mr. Chairman, I look forward to the--hearing from our
witnesses on the benefits and challenges associated with UAM
operations and on the role research can play in enhancing the
safety of future UAM operations.
And I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Johnson.
Let me introduce our experts today. And our first witness
is Dr. Jaiwon Shin, Associate Administrator of the Aeronautics
Research Mission Directorate at NASA. In this role, Dr. Shin
manages the agency's aeronautics research portfolio and guides
its strategic direction, including research in advanced air
vehicle concepts, airspace operations, safety integrated
aviation systems and the development of aviation concepts.
Prior to working at NASA headquarters, Dr. Shin served as
Chief of the Aeronautics Projects Office at NASA's Glenn
Research Center, where he managed all of the Center's
aeronautics projects.
Dr. Shin received a bachelor's degree from Yonsei
University in Korea, a master's degree in mechanical
engineering from California State University, and a Ph.D. in
mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech University.
Our second witness is Dr. John-Paul Clarke, the College of
Engineering Dean's Professor at the Georgia Institute of
Technology, and the Co-Chair of the 2014 National Research
Council Committee on Autonomy Research for Civil Aviation. Dr.
Clarke's main areas of research include aircraft trajectory
prediction and optimization, especially as it pertains to the
development of flight procedures that reduce the environmental
impact of aviation.
Dr. Clarke received his Bachelor of Science, Master of
Science, and Doctorate of Science degrees from MIT. Apparently,
you like Cambridge.
Our third witness today is Dr. Eric Allison, Head of
Aviation Programs at Uber. Prior to Uber, Dr. Allison served as
CEO of Zee Aero, where he led the development of the Cora
vehicle, a two-place, self-piloted air taxi.
Dr. Allison received a Bachelor of Arts in mechanical
engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering. He also
earned a Master of Science and Ph.D. from the Department of
Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University.
Our fourth witness is Mr. Michael Thacker, Executive Vice
President of Technology and Innovation at Bell. In this role,
Mr. Thacker is responsible for leading Bell's engineering team
and providing strategic direction for designing, developing,
and integrating technologies. Prior to Bell, Mr. Thacker served
as a Senior Vice President of Engineering at Textron Aviation.
Mr. Thacker holds a bachelor of science in aerospace
engineering and a Master of Science from Kansas University. He
also holds an MBA degree from Duke University.
Our final witness is Ms. Anna Mracek Dietrich, Co-Founder
and Regulatory Affairs at Terrafugia. She leads Terrafugia's
U.S. regulatory policy engagement.
Prior to founding Terrafugia, Ms. Dietrich worked to
advance pioneering strategies and product development at GE
Aviation and Boeing Phantom Works. As a recognized leader in
aviation and innovation, she was named one of Boston's top 15
innovators by the Boston Globe.
Ms. Dietrich earned bachelor and Master of Science degrees
in aerospace engineering from MIT, and also holds a private
pilot license.
We welcome you all, and look forward to your testimony. Dr.
Shin, if you'll begin.
TESTIMONY OF DR. JAIWON SHIN,
ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR,
AERONAUTICS RESEARCH
MISSION DIRECTORATE, NASA
Dr. Shin. Chairman Smith, thanks so much for that great
opening.
Ranking Member Johnson and Members of the Committee, thank
you for this opportunity to testify on NASA's aeronautics
research program and the R&D challenges related to urban air
mobility, or UAM.
NASA's aeronautics is globally recognized as the DNA of the
aviation system. For over 100 years, we have been conducting
world-class research to enable safer, more efficient, and more
environmentally friendly air transportation systems. We work
through collaborative partnerships with the U.S. aviation
industry, other government agencies, and academia to ensure our
technologies quickly transition for application.
As the introduction of the jet engine revolutionized
aviation in the last century, UAM promises another revolution
in this century. This new capability could completely transform
the urban landscape and change our lifestyle. Urban air
mobility is not a new idea, but in the past, the technologies
were not available to meet the safety and economic
requirements.
So what's different now? First, the enabling technologies
are within our grasp such as an ability to manage massive data
sets; electric power and propulsion systems for quiet,
sustainable, and more affordable vehicles; miniaturization and
fusion of sensors in vehicle and operational system autonomy.
Second, by the middle of the century, 70 percent of the
world population will live in urban areas. Mobility within
these cities will require different solutions.
Finally, there is a change in consumer expectations. Across
society, we are bringing technology to end-users on demand and
at their fingertips. Now, technology can enable the same on-
demand experience in aviation.
But this new market won't emerge overnight. UAM will start
with a mix of onboard-piloted and remotely piloted vehicles and
progress toward autonomous operations. Markets will develop
incrementally with initial markets driven by the need to have a
solid safety case. Along the way, many challenges will need to
be solved.
NASA focuses on the critical technical challenges where no
one company can go alone. And NASA is already contributing. We
have recently made history by flying our Ikhana UAS without a
chase aircraft utilizing the standards that we developed and
validated. We innovated the UAS traffic management or UTM
concept for smaller UAS to operate at low altitude in
uncontrolled airspace. Today, UAM is accepted concept around
the world.
Through our general aviation size X-57 distributed electric
propulsion demonstrator, we are helping to develop and validate
standards and means of certifying electric propulsion
components and systems. But UAM presents many more challenges
in technical regulatory policy and infrastructure areas.
Prevailing UAM vehicle concepts employ vertical takeoff and
landing designs that utilize distributed electric propulsion
systems and highly automated guidance and control systems.
Assuring the safety of these vehicles for operation in densely
populated urban areas will be a major challenge.
To enable UAM operations of distributed highly automated
service provider-based system with robust data-sharing is
needed, which is precisely what NASA is developing today with
UTM. We will extend the UTM concept to meet the even more
challenging UAM requirements.
Communities will not accept UAM operations if the noise
level significantly exceeds background noise levels. Meeting
those expectations requires technologies to reduce vehicle
noise and mitigate noise through operational procedures. NASA
is uniquely positioned to make impactful contributions to
realizing the UAM vision by providing leadership in identifying
the key challenges and conducting necessary R&D to address
those challenges. We are actively shifting our focus to work on
these challenges, building new partnerships, and leveraging
ongoing work to make an impact as soon as possible.
UAM is a major economic and transportation opportunity that
the United States must lead. NASA will do our best to ensure
the United States maintains the global leadership. With the
right technology, right business environment, and
entrepreneurial spirit to succeed, NASA and the U.S. aviation
community will lead the world into a new era of aviation.
Thank you again for this opportunity to testify on this
critically important topic. I look forward to answering your
questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Shin follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Dr. Shin.
And Dr. Clarke?
TESTIMONY OF DR. JOHN-PAUL CLARKE,
COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING DEAN'S PROFESSOR,
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY;
CO-CHAIR, 2014 NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
COMMITTEE ON AUTONOMY RESEARCH FOR CIVIL AVIATION
Dr. Clarke. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Johnson, Members
of the Committee, thank you for this opportunity to comment on
the potential benefits and challenges of urban air mobility.
The subject vision for UAM is that of vertical takeoff and
landing and in some cases short takeoff and landing vehicles
transporting people directly between their origins and their
destinations. However, there's also an equally compelling
vision of VTOL vehicles, potentially autonomous VTOL vehicles
transporting packages and cargo on nonstop segments between
their origins and destinations.
My sense is that UAM will involve the movement of both
people and cargo between origins and destinations and that it's
also very likely that they will have to be a dynamic hub-and-
spoke network in a similar way to we have airlines where flight
segments and the locations of hubs are dynamically generated
based on the demand that you see at any given time.
With this vision as a basis for analysis, it's evident to
me that, first, aircraft will require greater autonomy in
operations, and by that I mean be able to operate without human
intervention, supervision, and autonomous decision-making,
i.e., able to determine what to do next in a situation that was
not preprogrammed or predetermined.
Second, the two basic aspects of air-traffic management,
air-traffic control and traffic flow management, will also
require greater autonomy.
Third, the proliferation of vertiports will raise noise,
privacy, and safety concerns.
Fourth, vertiport locations and flight trajectories must be
jointly optimized for efficiency, noise, privacy, and safety.
Fifth, ATM for UAM will likely be provided by private/
municipal entities, maybe public-private partnerships that are
monitored or regulated by the FAA.
And sixth, legislation may be needed with respect to
certification requirements for vehicles, systems, and
operators.
The first two issues I've raised relate to autonomy. The
third and fourth issues relate to modeling and optimization.
The fifth and sixth are public policy issues for which I am not
an expert but I am sure many in the room are. Thus, I will
confine the remainder of my remarks to the research challenges
and objectives for autonomy research and for modeling and
optimization research.
With regards to autonomy research, in 2014 the NRC report
entitled ``Autonomy Research for Civil Aviation: Towards a New
Era of Flight,'' my colleagues and I identified eight technical
barriers, four regulation and certification barriers, and two
legal and social barriers to increased autonomy.
We propose the following four most urgent and most
difficult research projects: develop methodologies to
characterize and bound the behavior of adaptive nondeterminate
systems over their complete lifecycle; two, develop the system
architectures and techniques that would enable increasingly
sophisticated and increasingly autonomous systems and unmanned
aircraft to operate for extended periods without real-time
human cognizance or control; three, develop the theoretical
basis and methodologies for using modeling and simulation to
accelerate the development and maturation of advanced
increasingly autonomous systems and aircraft; and fourth,
develop standards and processes for verification, validation,
and certification of increasingly autonomous systems and
determine their implications for design.
I believe that these research projects remain relevant to
the quest for increasing the autonomous vehicles and systems
and are just as relevant to the realization of UAM. To my
knowledge NASA has started research in each of these four
areas. However, progress has been slow and needs to be
accelerated.
In regards to modeling and optimization research,
helicopter noise has been and continues to be a concern in
urban areas. I have every reason, given the similarities, to
believe that the noise from proposed UAM VTOL will also be a
concern in urban areas. Separately, there continues to be
concern about safety of helicopters and other rotorcraft, and
current understanding of the privacy and safety concerns of the
general public is poor.
With these considerations in mind, I believe that UAM will
be further enabled by investments in the following four
research projects:
First, develop models for source noise and failure
characteristics of a wide range of proposed vehicles in a wide
range of operating conditions.
Second, develop noise and failure modeling frameworks that
can be used in the context of a broader vehicle design tool to
develop no-noise, high-reliability vehicles and to aid in
certification.
Third, develop holistic analytics capabilities for UAM.
Fourth, develop high-fidelity computationally efficient
algorithms to optimize trajectories and the locations of
vehicles.
Thank you for inviting me to testify and for having the
vision to hold a hearing on this very important topic. I look
forward to your questions and to working with you in the future
on this topic.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Clarke follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Dr. Clarke.
Dr. Allison?
TESTIMONY OF DR. ERIC ALLISON,
HEAD OF AVIATION PROGRAMS, UBER
Dr. Allison. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Johnson, and
Members of the Committee, it is a privilege to be here before
you today to discuss the role Uber will play in delivering
aerial-ride sharing services in the years ahead. My name is
Eric Allison, and I'm excited to lead Uber's Elevate
initiative. Elevate is building our future Uber air product
that aims to allow anyone to push a button and get a flight. To
achieve this, we are developing a real-time on-demand network
of air vehicles to deliver time savings to riders on a massive
scale.
We are creating Uber Air because we believe aerial
ridesharing has the potential to radically improve urban
mobility. Every year, millions of hours are wasted in traffic
on roads worldwide. In 2016, the Texas Department of
Transportation estimated drivers in five of the State's largest
metropolitan areas lose about 52 hours a year due to
congestion. And here in the United States we have one of the
world's most congested cities, Los Angeles. This is why we have
announced Dallas-Fort Worth and Los Angeles as two of our
launch markets. For residents of these cities and for the rest
of us, moments stuck on the road represent less time with
family, fewer hours growing our economies, and more money spent
polluting the world.
As a multimodal transportation company, Uber believes
solving this problem is core to our mission of making
transportation safe, reliable, and affordable to everyone
everywhere. Just as skyscrapers allowed cities to use limited
land more efficiently, urban air transportation will use all
three dimensions to alleviate transportation congestion on the
ground.
We started this journey two years ago by publishing our
Elevate white paper, which I respectfully request be entered
into the record.
Chairman Smith. Without objection, the white paper will be
made a part of the record.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Dr. Allison. Thank you. We wanted to understand why people
don't fly in cities today and what barriers must be overcome to
make this possible.
In addressing these questions we identified an approach to
systematically tackle each of the challenges, and in fact, our
analysis not only projects aerial ridesharing as feasible but
also leads us to chart a path to launch at affordable prices.
Once economies of scale are achieved, we could operate at rates
cheaper than owning and driving your own car.
To achieve this vision, we aim to begin testing vehicles in
Texas and California by 2020 and commence certified commercial
operations in 2023. During our trial phase, we intend to prove
the high safety, constant reliability, and low-noise aspects of
our service so we may expand passenger operations once we begin
deploying certified aircraft. In both markets our service holds
the promise of reducing congestion and improving quality of
life.
Ultimately, no one company can do this alone. Broad-based
partnerships with government and industry are critical to
achieve this vision. One of our partners, Bell, is a leading
rotorcraft manufacture and is well-positioned to pave the way
for safe, reliable, and affordable Uber air taxis. Together
with our other vehicle partners--Boeing's Aurora, Embraer,
Pipistrel, and Karem Aircraft--we are actively designing new
aircraft to lead a revolution in urban aviation in cities
around the globe. We're proud to be collaborating with these
job-creators to chart the future.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is
another important partner. We've signed two Space Act
agreements with NASA, one for the development of new UTM
concepts and another to explore technologies for urban air
mobility. As part of these agreements, we've completed a study
on ways our aircraft will safely separate from commercial
airliners in Dallas-Fort Worth airport and conducted
simulations paving the way for long-term air-traffic management
solutions. Additional studies to unlock urban air
transportation are ongoing.
We ask Congress to encourage NASA to continue investing in
this ecosystem, and we look forward to extending our
collaborations with NASA and other governmental partners to
work on aircraft innovation, noise limitations, and autonomous
flight. As a member of the NASA Advisory Council Aeronautics
Committee, I'm confident our joint research efforts can and
will help open this market and ask each of you to encourage and
support NASA to continue investing in this exciting new
industry.
At Uber we are investing in aerial ridesharing because it
has the potential to deliver time savings at affordable prices
to consumers around the world. We see exceptional demand across
all large markets for safe, reliable, fast transportation
services, and our network can be an excellent supplement to
public and private transit options across each of them.
The converging forces of improving battery technology,
massive utilization through rideshare, and the advent of
reliable autonomous aviation will be a true gamechanger in how
people move around cities across the world. Working with
visionary leaders like those at this table, we will bring about
lasting positive change.
To give you a sense of how users will live this future
transportation experience, I would like to close with a short
video illustrating Uber Air. I hope you enjoy this projection
of the future and look forward to answering your questions
about our vision and our approach. Thank you.
Please play the video.
Chairman Smith. Okay.
[Video shown.]
Dr. Allison. So in this video you see the integration of
our service with the Uber app. The rider requests a ride and
then is directed to a sky port where they're able to board an
aircraft and be taken to their destination, flying above
traffic. And then the vehicle goes away to take the next ride.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Allison follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Smith. Closer than you think. Thank you, Dr.
Allison.
Mr. Thacker?
TESTIMONY OF MR. MICHAEL THACKER,
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT,
TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION, BELL
Mr. Thacker. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Johnson,
Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to testify
this morning on the subject of urban air mobility. My name is
Michael Thacker, and I am Executive Vice President of
Technology and Innovation at Bell. Made up of 7,200 employees,
Bell is based in Fort Worth, Texas. My written testimony has
been submitted for the record, but I appreciate the opportunity
to highlight a few key elements for the consideration of the
Committee.
To help set the stage, I would also like to start by
sharing a video.
[Video shown.]
Mr. Thacker. At Bell, we have a legacy of leading
innovation in aviation, as I mentioned, from the first American
jet fighter to the first tiltrotor. Today, we are carrying that
forward by creating new opportunities in urban air
transportation with electric and hybrid vertical takeoff and
landing aircraft.
Much work remains to be done by Bell and our partners and
government agencies to operationalize on-demand mobility in the
vertical dimension and bring the benefits of aviation to our
communities in a way that is safe, quiet, convenient, and
affordable.
Work is progressing on many fronts with our partners,
including private entities like Uber and public agencies like
the FAA and NASA. At Bell, we are using four integrated
frameworks to help define the urban air mobility model:
operational, regulatory, manufacturing, and technology. The
operational framework allows us to define the necessary
requirements for urban on-demand mobility. These include
operational infrastructure, safety and acoustic considerations,
and the critical need for a solution that is affordable for
most people. The operational framework also includes local
community engagement.
Bell's top priority within the regulatory framework is
working with the FAA and other regulatory stakeholders to
establish an integrated approach across vehicle, operational,
and air-traffic requirements. We firmly believe that current
aviation safety expectations should be met and even exceeded,
but new vehicles and operational models may mitigate risks in
new ways.
The recent modification to the certification requirements
for small aircraft known as part 23, amendment 64, and its
performance-based approach provides a reasonable starting point
for certifying these new aircraft. We would like to see a
similar performance-based approach to the integrated safety
system requirements for the vehicle operations and airspace
together. A holistic regulatory approach will help provide a
clear path to compliance and permission to operate for urban
mobility concepts.
The manufacturing framework is developing fabrication and
assembly processes and technologies critical for success of
urban mobility. Quality and safety are baseline expectations,
so the primary efforts here focus on cost, weight, and
environmental impact.
The technology framework is informed by the needs created
in the other three. Bell and our partners are developing
technologies such as electric and hybrid electric distributed
propulsion, augmented and autonomous flight controls, and
secure remote monitoring and fleet management solutions to form
the basis for a new breed of aircraft and the backbone of urban
mobility operations. Taken together, these frameworks will
inform the continued development of Bell on-demand air mobility
concepts. While we are not ready to share our program
timelines, we believe viable commercial operations are possible
in the mid-2020s.
The traffic congestion challenges facing our population
centers aren't going away and are not likely to be solved
through conventional means. We must approach tomorrow's
challenges with innovative thinking that not only helps manage
known issues like traffic but also creates new opportunities
for technological advancement, for new career fields, for noise
and pollution reduction, and for an increased quality of life
for our citizens.
There is still a lot of work to be done to create a viable
flight-based urban air mobility network, but we believe that
future is real and coming soon to a neighborhood near you. We
look forward to working with you to bring it to life.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify, and I look
forward to answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Thacker follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Thacker.
And Ms. Dietrich?
TESTIMONY OF MS. ANNA MRACEK DIETRICH,
CO-FOUNDER AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS, TERRAFUGIA
Ms. Dietrich. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member
Johnson, and Members of the Committee. I appreciate the
opportunity to be here this morning to talk to you about
something that I've been working on for well over the last
decade.
My name is Anna Mracek Dietrich, and I'm one of the
original founders of Terrafugia. I currently lead our company's
regulatory and policy efforts.
Next slide, please.
[Slide.]
Ms. Dietrich. Terrafugia was founded in 2006 to help
address the $160 billion transportation challenge that we face
in this country. Today, we're employing over 150 people across
three locations in the United States and are getting ready to
bring our first general aviation product, the Transition, what
you see on the screen, to market next year.
Following Transition, which takes off and lands from
airports and is street legal to drive home and park in your
garage--we are pursuing an eVTOL concept, which we're currently
calling TF-2.
Next slide, please.
[Slide.]
Ms. Dietrich. You can see some information about it here,
but I think a video is worth more than 1,000 words if you could
please go ahead with that.
[Video shown.]
Ms. Dietrich. So the idea behind TF-2 is that it is a
three-part system. It fully integrates ground and air
transportation, so you are picked up by the ground vehicle with
the passenger pod at your origin. It drives you to a vertiport
where you're connected to an electrical vertical takeoff and
landing air vehicle, which then flies you across traffic to
your final destination.
Unlike some of the other entrants into this space, TF-2 has
a little bit of a longer range. We are using a hybrid electric
power system for flight, and that gives us a range of around
200 miles, which allows not only urban operations but could
bring in people from surrounding rural areas for hospital
visits, things like that as well. And then once you are on the
ground, another ground vehicle picks you up and takes you to
your final destination.
We're anticipating around $30 for a 10-minute flight, and
that should take about 20 minutes over traffic, so it should be
an accessible form of transportation.
Next slide, please.
[Slide.]
Ms. Dietrich. So there's three pieces of the regulatory
landscape that I see as being necessary to support this new
technology--Ms. Johnson mentioned several of these in her
opening remarks--the airworthiness certification, operations
and operators, and air-traffic control. The airworthiness
certification is the most mature of all of these areas. As was
mentioned, the Part 23 rewrite, which was completed last year,
is a key piece of that. Having safety intent regulations really
do allow additional innovation to be brought into general
aviation, so that is where we anticipate certifying these
aircraft is in Part 23, Amendment 64. You can see the
comparison to Part 27, which is rotorcraft, and it's
significantly more appealing to go into Part 23.
From the operations and operators' perspective, that's
where we start talking about bringing autonomy into the
equation, everything from how do we appropriately train pilots
to accommodate for new technologies in the cockpit through how
do we ultimately certify an aircraft to be safe to be flown
without a human directing it? So that's a whole spectrum of
efforts that are currently ongoing from both the operational
and aircraft certification and training perspectives.
Air-traffic control, I see it as very important that we
consider our airspace as unified airspace, so it's very
tempting to try to segregate both along the lines of existing
airspace sort of designations, but as well in terms of
industries. And as you can see in the graphic there, it really
is a transportation ecosystem. It's a network. Everything from
small unmanned drones that might be delivering your packages
all the way through commercial airliners, there's a lot of
different uses for the sky, and they all need to be combined
into a constructive single system.
So as we look forward to systems for that, I think there's
a few pieces that we need to keep in mind. One is that we need
to be thinking about incorporating new technologies into how we
control airspace using vehicle-to-vehicle communications,
potentially getting away from voice communications, and really
looking at it as a single system.
Next slide, please.
[Slide.]
Ms. Dietrich. So there's also some challenges associated
with bringing any new technology to market and creating a new
industry. These are just a few of them. I've touched on them in
more detail in the written testimony, but the four that I'll
highlight are connectivity, infrastructure access, technology
development, and affordability. By connectivity I mean some of
what I was mentioning before, both vehicle-to-vehicle
communications and vehicle to air-traffic controller or other
ground-based systems. This includes continued-access GPS
capabilities, 5G cell data service, and appropriate frequency
band allocations for transportation.
Infrastructure access spans local, state, and federal
levels. Technology development, in many ways we are already
well on our way towards the technology that we need to
accomplish these missions in these vehicles, but additional
research will set the stage for future applications.
And then affordability is really primarily within the realm
of the manufacturers, but it is of course influenced by how
streamlined the certification and operation processes can be.
Last slide, please.
[Slide.]
Ms. Dietrich. So with that, thank you very much for the
opportunity. I look forward to answering your questions and
continuing the discussion past this morning.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Dietrich follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Dietrich.
Let me recognize myself for five minutes for questions. And
let me ask you if you could possibly keep your answers to one
minute. I've got lots of questions and would like to get
through as many as possible.
Dr. Allison, the first one is for you. What are the
advantages of UAM networks over self-driving cars or
helicopters?
Dr. Allison. Thank you, Congressman, for the question. We
see the advantages of this type of aerial ridesharing as the
ability to have both higher-speed point-to-point and also
higher certainty. So once you take off, the likelihood or the
prediction of what time you're going to land is quite accurate
versus the ground transportation where you have much more
congestion. And so you have both higher speed and lower
variance, which adds a unique capability into the
transportation network. And these types of vehicles
additionally will be quieter, safer, and much cheaper to
operate than traditional helicopters, which will make it much
more accessible as a transportation system.
Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Allison.
Ms. Dietrich, the Transition will be the first flying car
available for public purchase. How confident are you that
they're going to be available to be bought next year?
Ms. Dietrich. Well, I'm much more confident that the
Transition will be available for purchase in 2019 than I would
have been several years ago giving you an estimate.
Chairman Smith. Okay.
Ms. Dietrich. We are currently tooling up for production.
We do have customers in line for delivery, and as of today----
Chairman Smith. Okay.
Ms. Dietrich. --things are on track for that----
Chairman Smith. And what do they cost and are you taking
orders?
Ms. Dietrich. We are taking orders. We have a team at
Oshkosh this morning--this week actually for that, and we
anticipate--if you're going to do private ownership model,
it'll be typical aircraft pricing so----
Chairman Smith. What is that?
Ms. Dietrich. Four hundred thousand dollars, in that
ballpark.
Chairman Smith. Okay.
Ms. Dietrich. Airplanes are expensive.
Chairman Smith. Okay.
Ms. Dietrich. We are looking at other options for being
able to use the vehicle----
Chairman Smith. Okay.
Ms. Dietrich. --on more of a shared use space----
Chairman Smith. Okay. And in five to ten years, you hope to
have some kind of a public transportation taxi service, is that
right?
Ms. Dietrich. The TF-2 time frame is five to ten years.
That's correct. That's the video that we saw this morning.
Chairman Smith. And Dr. Allison wants to know, won't you be
competing with Uber?
Ms. Dietrich. Well, I think there's a very broad market
space, and I think Uber is focused on operating inside city
centers, and the TF-2 gives you an opportunity to bring people
into that city center from surrounding areas. So I see it as a
very complementary service actually.
Chairman Smith. Wow, you're a politician. Okay.
Dr. Shin, on the urban air mobility, NASA has announced a
grand challenge. What does that consist of? What are the
details?
Dr. Shin. Yes, thank you for the question. We envision that
private industry investment and the pace of technology
advancement is just amazing and great, so we are trying to find
exactly what government should be doing to enable the private
investment and the progress. So we would like to provide a
forum where industry partners can come and check their ability
and capabilities. So we--government will provide a certain
level of requirements, in--particularly in safety area, in
noise area, and areas like that at the system level.
Chairman Smith. When will that be announced? When you're
going to----
Dr. Shin. We are formulating what sort of exactly the grand
challenge should be. As we are speaking, my team has been
working on that for a month, and we are hoping to announce the
intent by early next year so that industry partners can
prepare.
Chairman Smith. Okay.
Dr. Shin. And then toward the end of next calendar year,
we're hoping to announce the grand challenge.
Chairman Smith. Okay. That'll be a good incentive.
Mr. Thacker, I know you have a partnership with Uber to
design vertical takeoff or landing vehicles. My question for
you--and obviously, Bell has changed its name from Bell
Helicopter to just Bell. That may be part of the answer, but do
you think the days of the helicopters are limited or are there
still advantages to helicopters?
Mr. Thacker. So the days of the helicopter are not limited,
but we do see the world changing, and Bell is much more than
helicopters. We already are more than helicopters with
tiltrotor, with the V-22 and the V-280 for the Army and
Marines' future vertical lift needs.
But beyond this, this move in technology and convergence of
electric, hybrid, and distributed propulsion allows a new breed
of vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, one's for markets
like the Uber network but also for carrying cargo and
logistics, as Dr. Clarke mentioned. We see that as a tremendous
opportunity for our business and one that, as a legacy leader
in vertical lift, we should be leading as well and so thus the
change from Bell Helicopter to Bell.
However, from a heavy standpoint from things that require
large amounts of lift, there will be hydrocarbon-burning
helicopters around for a good long time.
Chairman Smith. And perhaps long distances as well?
Mr. Thacker. Absolutely.
Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Thacker.
Dr. Clarke, what kind of public-private partnerships can we
expect in coming years?
Dr. Clarke. I think, you know, it's not realistic to expect
FAA to be expanded to actually dealing with air-traffic control
in an urban environment, so I do believe municipalities will be
involved for liability reasons, and I think there are a lot of
companies out there working on ideas for air-traffic
management. And the NASA UTM program has been very instrumental
in figuring out how to get people to communicate and different
entities communicate together.
So ultimately, I see like a cable model where----
Chairman Smith. Yes.
Dr. Clarke. --some part of an urban area will be allocated
a space for them to provide a service of air-traffic control.
Obviously, the regulations have to be--the proper regulations
have to be put in place and the communications and handoff from
one area to the other will have to be worked out. But I
envision a cable model in a short sentence.
Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Clarke.
That concludes my questions. The gentlewoman from Texas,
the Ranking Member, is recognized for hers.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Clarke, you indicate in your prepared statement that
increasingly autonomous capability will be necessary as UAM
services expand. Could you highlight what you believe makes
that necessary? What will--what kind of attention will be given
to the safety risk? What role should research play in
mitigating such risk? And who should do this research?
Dr. Clarke. Well, I'll start with the last one. I
personally believe NASA is in the right position to do that
research. So I'm going back to the start of your question,
let's start with the commercial side, the Uber side of things.
Economies of scale dictate that you'd like to move first to one
operator and then no operator of a vehicle. And if you go to
one operator, the requirements to train that person to the
level of a commercial pilot are onerous and quite expensive.
And you have to pay them, and we already have a forecast
shortage of pilots. So that drives you there to more autonomous
vehicles so that you don't have to have somebody with a
commercial pilot license and 1,500 hours operating a vehicle.
So you have to then trade that off with some more autonomy to
complement their skill sets.
And then when you go to no operator or at least nobody in
the vehicle operating the vehicle and remote supervision, you
have things like loss of communication that become issues, so
the vehicles themselves have to be able to operate without a
linkage to somebody on the ground. So both of those things,
moving to a single pilot, moving to pilots with less training
than our current commercial pilots, and going towards
completely autonomous systems. I mean, systems that have
linkages with the ground which can be lost drive you towards
autonomy.
And the research needs to be done to figure out how to
get--the big thing is how do we get vehicles that, when faced
with the situation, don't just say ``does not compute'' and
shut down, right? We want vehicles that, when faced with a
situation, act more like humans, which basically try to figure
out what the issues are, try to figure out where the
constraints need to be relaxed, and what needs to be done to at
least get them to a safe point, a safe mode, which we've done
for many years on the space side where, when things happen,
there's always a safe mode to revert to. So that in summary is
where I think.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much.
Dr. Allison, in Dr. Clarke's prepared statement he
indicates that potential UAM service users are likely to prefer
the vertiport locations convenient to their homes and where
they're headed. How should that convenience of the UAM users be
balanced with community concerns in choosing vertiport
locations?
Dr. Allison. Thank you, Ranking Member, for your question.
This is a very important concern and something that we've spent
a lot of time looking into. One of our strengths at Uber is
that we do a lot of analysis, simulation and understanding of
transportation networks, and so we've made as a core of Elevate
an ability to analyze, to infuse together different types of
data for different communities that we're looking at in terms
of restrictions and noise sensitivities and things like that.
To actually determine where an optimal place is based on
demand, as well as community considerations are to place the
vertiports as we develop our network.
And so we want to do this in partnership with the local
communities, which is why we've had a very strong engagement
with both Dallas-Fort Worth and Los Angeles to actually
determine the right way to do this and to do it in a way that
works hand-in-hand with local communities to build a service
and a network that everyone's very happy with.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you. Based on FAA's experience with
community resistance to the concentration of flight tracks and
all of the application of next-gens, of tracks, and
performance-based navigation techniques, it appears--and I
don't know what it's going to cost. I don't know if you know
yet, but it does appear that the people who might be able to
use it are also the ones that do the most complaining about
air-traffic noise. And so how do you plan to mitigate that?
Dr. Allison. We have as our basis for what we're doing kind
of a deep view that community engagement is very important from
the very beginning, and so part of our desire to roll this out
in a systematic way is to start in places where there is the
right level of engagement and the right level of support in the
community and to demonstrate the low-noise capabilities and the
integration into the local transit system in a way that
demonstrates the utility and the overall value proposition of
this type of transportation to the wider community. And so
that's the approach that we're taking as we roll this out.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much. My time is expired.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Johnson.
The gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Lucas, is recognized for
questions.
Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I represent--and I guess I should direct my question to Dr.
Allison and Mr. Thacker and Mrs. Dietrich-- I represent a part
of the country that benefited greatly from the establishment of
the U.S. highway system. And when you're in Oklahoma, of course
you're on the old historic Route 66, the commerce road from
Chicago to Los Angeles, and it dramatically expanded the
availability of services, the nature of the economy in rural
America.
So let's talk for a moment about--and I know our initial
focus is on the urban areas--but let's talk about how long you
would expect the benefits of urban air mobility to work from
the urban zone out into the suburbs, the rural areas so to
speak.
Mr. Thacker. So I'm happy to take a stab at that----
Mr. Lucas. Please.
Mr. Thacker. --and then let my colleagues join in.
Honestly, we see the timeline for some of the applications
being very similar. At Bell we are developing all-electric
solutions for applications like the Uber network, but we're
developing hybrid electric solutions with modular propulsion to
extend the range. So the ability to deliver goods and services,
provide emergency medical capabilities, things that general
aviation already provides to rural communities with these
vehicles and with this system, it should be available in a
similar time frame. In reality, it may be available to some
degree sooner because, from an operational standpoint, we will
begin operating over lightly populated areas before we operate
over heavily populated urban areas.
Ms. Dietrich. And I would second what Mr. Thacker said. I
think that there is a real possibility to bring more rural
areas, more into some of the advantages that you have in the
urban areas, getting access to hospitals, more expedited cargo
delivery, things like that. I think this industry has the
ability to serve those areas very well, and I agree with the
timing and I agree with the hybrid propulsion solutions that
provide a longer range. You know, TF-2 has a range of around
200 miles. Those sorts of solutions will bring access to those
communities probably on the same time frame as the all-electric
versions to city centers.
Dr. Allison. Yes, our network is focused on higher-density
areas because a lot of the ability to drive utilization and
load factor into vehicles is one of the ways we're able to
drive costs down at least in our predictions on a cost per
passenger mile. So certainly, as we extend to less densely
populated areas, we'll have to revisit some of those
assumptions and look at the way the network flows are modeled
in--as the density decreases.
Mr. Lucas. This question I address to the whole panel. And
I go back once again to Route 66. When that was initially laid
down, the average automobile that would have puttered down the
road in Oklahoma would have been a Ford Model T, very simple
four-cylinder, minimal mufflers, no emission control
essentially whatsoever, but a very effective mass-produced
automobile that the country--for that matter, the world--
adopted and it led to an explosion and huge advancements in
automobile technology.
Assuming that this is a similar path moved forward a
century with the initial success and the mass adoption--because
we all tend to move as a group in this great country when it
comes to new technology, it seems--let's go back once more to
that issue about how we manage air traffic. If we suddenly go
from the Model T's of the 1920s to the automobiles of the '30s,
'40s, '50s, we'll have a dramatic explosion in the utilization
of the airspace.
I live in a part of western Oklahoma where, while it seems
very thinly populated, we are under a military air reservation.
We have training flights, primary pilots, the transport Air
Force cargo planes that train all the time. We've got the East-
West traffic, the commercial stuff with the higher elevations,
which I realize is above where we're talking about going, but
let's discuss for just a moment the public-private sector
relationship, how we think they'll advance. Can we keep up when
it comes to managing that air-traffic flow if there is an
explosion in utilization?
Ms. Dietrich. I thank you for bringing up the history of
the automobile and bringing that industry online because when
first those Model T's were rolled out, we didn't have the
transportation infrastructure on the ground that we do today
either. We didn't have stoplights at every corner.
Mr. Lucas. Exactly.
Ms. Dietrich. We didn't have, you know, the rules of the
road----
Mr. Lucas. And my great-grandfather said it was----
Ms. Dietrich. Yes.
Mr. Lucas. --a silly fad at the time, yes.
Ms. Dietrich. Exactly. So we have a history of being able
to kind of evolve very quickly in these ways, and I think we
will see something similar with these vehicles. And I think we
can do a lot today in laying the groundwork and preparing
ourselves for them, but I think we also do have to stay a bit
nimble on our feet and be prepared to adapt as we see where
this industry truly goes and where the demand really surfaces.
So I think we can--and I know the work is being done here
is definitely in line with preparing us for that, but I think
at the same time we need to be willing to accept the fact that
we don't exactly know how this is going to play out and that
there will be things that arise that we haven't been able to
foresee and that we should be able to adapt as we go and have
confidence in our ability to do so.
Mr. Lucas. Thank you. My time is expired, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Lucas.
The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Beyer, is recognized. Now,
I know the gentleman has a certain interest in car dealerships.
When it is he going to start selling flying cars?
Mr. Beyer. Yes, I just came to see if I could get a
franchise today, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Allison--this is relevant for everyone, but Dr.
Allison, I'm picking on you. And I live in northern Virginia,
which has the longest commute times in the country, the second-
worst congestion. You come in I-66, I-95, I-395, the GW Parkway
in the morning and it's just bumper-to-bumper sometimes all day
long. So I keep trying to imagine--and often, when I'm in
traffic, I imagine moving to the third dimension. But I'm
trying to figure how many cars do you really need to remove
from a congested I-95 to get it to actually flow?
And when you look at the size of the vehicles that we've
seen in the videos, which are going to require more front
space, rear space, left, right, and above and below just
because they're airplanes rather than cars, it'd be fascinating
to see the video that shows how you've taken, say, 20 percent,
25 percent of the cars off and how incredibly congested the
airspace goes above, especially if you assume--and I do--that
the communities are going to insist that the lanes are defined
for these vehicles, too, that you're not just flying over
neighborhoods that--as right now, the helicopters are supposed
to fly along the existing corridors.
I can see why you need autonomous, too, because if you
start putting all these people up in the air that are texting
while they're flying their plane, it can become incredibly
difficult so----
Dr. Allison. Thank you, Congressman, for the question. So
the vision that we have is that this will happen progressively
over time, so it won't start with, you know, many, many, many
aircraft flying around. It will start with a few, and we'll
build up the systems as we learn, as Anna was saying actually.
However, if you think about the three dimensions of the
space available to sequence and structure--and we've done lots
of simulations of this as well--vehicles flying between
different points in the point-to-point type of a network, at a
couple thousand feet you don't actually get to the same type of
congestion that you see on the ground because there's just a
lot more space and you can space things out.
And one of the features of the types of vehicles that we're
all talking about here, these vertical takeoff and landing
electric vehicles that convert from rotor-borne flight in the
takeoff and landing phase to wing-borne flight in the cross-
country phase is that they get dramatically quieter and more
efficient as they're flying in vertical flight. So when they're
up at cruise altitude and flying along, they're very quiet, you
basically don't hear them. They're not the same as a helicopter
where they make a significant amount of noise through the whole
segment of the flight that they're on.
So those different features, the fact that there's a lot of
space in order to space things out, the fact that they're
pretty quiet, and they go a lot faster than cars, too, so we're
talking 150 to 200 miles an hour in terms of the cruise speed
allows the airspace to soak up a lot more traffic than----
Mr. Beyer. Okay.
Dr. Allison. --you'd expect based on the way ground
networks, which are basically kind of quasi-one
dimensionaltworks clog up with cars.
Mr. Beyer. All right. Thank you very much.
Dr. Clarke, picking up on what Dr. Allison just said, in
your testimony you talked about the similarities between
helicopters and urban air mobility and that a likely side
effect of urban air mobility could be the constant drone of
aircraft noise. I don't need to tell you that the number-one
concern in my district is aircraft noise followed closely by
helicopter noise. How do we assure those folks that--you know,
our research into UAM is really focusing on the noise piece,
too.
Dr. Clarke. Well, that's part of the reason why I suggested
in my testimony that there needs to be research and a tool--and
this hasn't--it's not going to be just one company or one
manufacturer. It has to be a government or the community, broad
community, accepted and verified tool for optimizing the
trajectories to make sure that the noise level is above the
ambient. I mean, in the end, people worry about what's above
the ambient. I mean, you look back to the Grand Canyon, you
know, people said, oh, the airplane is quiet, the helicopter is
quiet, but if it's above 35 DB or 40 DB in the afternoons,
people complain. And that's very quiet, but people have gone to
the Grand Canyon for that natural quiet. And so it--you always
have to match the noise level with the ambient, and we have
to--we can do it, but it will require a lot of optimization of
where the vertiports are, what routes they're flying.
And I would add privacy to one of those things because we
actually don't know how people are going to react to vehicles
being that close to their houses. And we have to do some
studies to actually figure it out. And in fact we don't know
how people are going to respond to vehicles flying, you know,
at 400 feet or 1,000 feet on a long distance at that constant
altitude because we're accustomed to vehicles basically taking
off and going to much higher altitudes.
So there's work to be done to understand people's
responses, and then there's work to be done to model, and then
there's work to be done to optimize the trajectories because,
ultimately, we want to enable UAM. I mean, I'm an airplane guy,
but----
Mr. Beyer. Yes.
Dr. Clarke. --we want to do it right.
Mr. Beyer. It is going to change sunbathing in the
backyards, though.
Dr. Clarke. Yes, I suspect it will.
Mr. Beyer. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Beyer.
The gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Abraham, is recognized.
Mr. Abraham. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I appreciate the
hand-up you gave of the history of the flying car going back to
1947. I know in 1949, Moulton Taylor had an Aerocar that
actually flew. And to your James Bond fondness, as--which I
am--if you remember, The Man with the Golden Gun had a flying
car in that movie also.
Ms. Dietrich, I was there when Terrafugia premiered their
car at Oshkosh. After votes Thursday, I'll also be flying to
Oshkosh, and your booth is always the most popular. There's
always a large crowd, so you certainly have the attention of
the aviators of the world, so I think we're getting close.
And I'm not too worried about the noise level. I know you
guys will have to get it right from a business standpoint or
you won't survive. That's going to be driven by both civilian
population, as Dr. Clarke alluded to.
I guess my concern--and it's been brought up--is
transitioning from an uncontrolled airspace where basically you
can do what you want to, to a controlled airspace and whether
it's class delta, which is in a small community or whether it's
class B, as you guys know that are on the board there, that
airspace is controlled from surface up to 4,000, up to 10,000
in class B. So ATC has control in even a small city from
surface on up. And a day like today where it's cloudy, the
ceiling is low, I'm concerned that if you have an autonomous
vehicle that, you know, gets lost in the clouds, it gets
basically disoriented, and unfortunately, you know, bad things
happen.
Ms. Dietrich, I'll I guess go to you first. I'm assuming
that for the Terrafugia Transition car a pilot's license will
be required to purchase that car?
Ms. Dietrich. Well, thank you for the question. Thank you
for the kind words. Yes, for Transition, our first product,
that's a light sport aircraft, so you will need a sport pilot
license or better in order to fly that aircraft. And depending
on the qualifications of the pilot in the aircraft, you
wouldn't be flying that particular aircraft in a day like
today.
From an instrument--meteorological-conditions perspective,
autonomy is actually a safety benefit in those areas because
all of the sensors that you would use to fly an aircraft on a
sunny day are the same as the ones you would use to fly on a
cloudy day. So autonomous capabilities can actually increase
safety in bad weather, which is one of the reasons why we're
considering incorporating them not just in these urban air
mobility vehicles but looking at ways to bring them in to
broader general aviation as well.
Mr. Abraham. And I'll agree with that. I fly Cirrus, which
has wonderful avionics and certainly can make me a much better
pilot in conditions like this than me flying myself, so, you
know, I can't argue there.
And we know that in you all's world we're having to convert
to ADS-B Out by 2020, and if you ADS Out--and cars--flying cars
and certainly airplanes can talk to each other, so that may
alleviate some of the burden on air-traffic control.
Again, I worry also, you know, about the weight and
balance, if you get somebody that does not know aerodynamics
and they get into an autonomous vehicle that overloads its
weight and balance capability, then you're in a dangerous
situation.
And, Dr. Allison, I know Uber and companies like yours are
thinking along those lines. And I'll just let you comment.
Dr. Allison. Sure. Thank you, Congressman, for your
question. Those are all very important considerations, and we
are certainly going to take a crawl-walk-run approach to this
as we develop the networks. We will start with demonstration
flights initially, experimental flights basically in
conjunction with our partners in the partner cities, and then
as--we will learn from that as we move toward the 2023 launch
of the commercial flights that we're ambitiously projecting.
So these questions of weight and balance, those will all
have to be figured out by learning, by actually simulating
these things and testing them in practice as we roll toward
that initial startup commercial service.
Mr. Abraham. And for you and Ms. Dietrich, are you planning
on building these cars under part 23?
Ms. Dietrich. Yes, sir. Part 23, amendment 64, is a good
fit for these aircraft. There's about 80 percent of that rule
that applies directly without any need for modification, ten
percent that's just simply not applicable like landing on
water. And then there's about ten percent of that rule where
we'll need to work with the FAA for special conditions or other
consideration where it just wasn't originally contemplated. But
by and large it's a good fit.
Mr. Abraham. And the FAA has helped a little bit with the
regulation, part 23, as far as that?
Ms. Dietrich. Yes.
Mr. Abraham. Dr. Shin, do you have any comments on any of
this?
Dr. Shin. No, I think I support everything the other
witnesses mentioned. I think I want to point out that this is a
great opportunity for the country, that from very high-tech but
low-volume industry that aviation has been accepted, general
aviation part. We are actually looking at the possibility of
turning the aviation industry as a whole from--it's still very
high-tech--but extremely high volume just like automobile
industry. So I think government really needs to find a way to
enable this new capability for the country, our national
economy, and jobs.
Mr. Abraham. Well, I agree. And look, I think it's an
exciting time and I wish all you guys the best of luck. I think
the future is bright, so thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Abraham.
The gentleman from California, Mr. McNerney, is recognized.
Mr. McNerney. I thank the Chairman for having an
interesting hearing and for passing out party favors as well.
One of the things that worries me about this subject is
energy consumption. I mean, these things are going to--the--a
flying vehicle is going to take a lot more energy than a
surface vehicle. Can someone address the differential and how
much more energy it's going to take to get somebody from point
A to point B on a flying vehicle than a surface vehicle?
Dr. Allison. I'm happy to jump in.
Mr. McNerney. Sure.
Dr. Allison. Thank you, Congressman, for the question. So,
actually, the amount of energy per passenger mile is similar to
an electric car, so for an all-electric version of these
vehicles. Because they have to be very efficient in order to
make it work essentially, that you have to design the
aerodynamics and tailor the energy consumption for the vertical
takeoff and landing phases of this, that it's not substantially
different than a surface vehicle when it's all said and done
because of the much more enhanced aerodynamic design and
tailoring that has to be done for these types of air vehicles.
Mr. McNerney. So speaking of aerodynamics, I mean, how
much--how fast do you have to go to get one of these vehicles
off the ground? I mean, there's a speed issue here which must--
yes?
Dr. Allison. So the concept of most of what we're talking
about is to take off and land vertically, so they actually take
off at zero speed just like a helicopter and then transition to
forward flight either--through different means so the
different--different of our vehicle partners are approaching
this problem in different ways. We have different types of
vehicle concepts that accomplish that transitioning regime
differently. But then once they're wing-borne, they fly like an
airplane on the wing, which is much, much more efficient than
flying rotor-borne, and that allows them to be lower noise and
higher performance.
Mr. McNerney. Well, thank you. And again, I don't know who
to ask this question of, but according to a 2015 GAO report,
newly developed aircraft may be particularly vulnerable to
cyber attacks and cyber issues. If a hacker is able to overcome
an aircraft's firewall, it could cause significant damage.
Where do we stand with regard to security on these and being
able to provide the security that we need to make sure that
there's not a safety issue?
Dr. Clarke. So I'll take that. My committee, the one I
chaired--co-chaired in 2014, I identified security as being a
major issue. I have briefed the then-DNI on this topic and I
can't talk about that here, but I know that work is being done
very extensively looking at this. As you rightly point out,
there are vulnerabilities that need to be addressed.
You know, in the old days, air-traffic control had security
from obscurity in that nobody could get in, and therefore, you
couldn't do anything. Now that you have lots of wireless
networks and IP protocols, there are opportunities, and people
are working hard on this I know on this topic.
Mr. Thacker. Yes, I agree, and I think the key with it is
an ongoing vigilance because it isn't a static target that
says----
Mr. McNerney. Right.
Mr. Thacker. --we've solved cyber and now we're ready to go
forward. It's going to be something that we have to continue to
adjust and adapt as we go forward because the threats will
continue to adapt as well.
Mr. McNerney. So I've asked about energy, I've asked about
cyber. What about cost? Is there going to be a comparable cost
of a flying vehicle versus a surface vehicle?
Dr. Allison. Thank you for the question. We--so what we
have announced--we--at the--a big event we did in the spring is
that our initial targets for rollout of this service, we kind
of have announced a series of target-priced steps that we
believe we can essentially match UberBLACK pricing in the
initial rollout of the--in the target cities, Dallas-Fort Worth
and Los Angeles, by increasing utilization and increasing the
load factor by utilizing pooling out of our ground network. We
think we can get to UberX-type pricing, which is around, say,
$1.50 per passenger mile roughly speaking. And that's enabled
by aggressively pooling to drive load factor into the vehicles
and get the utilization up.
And ultimately, we see at scale with improved manufacturing
techniques that are more akin to the automotive industry, that
we can be competitive with the costs and again on a passenger-
mile basis of car ownership, which is something like 44 cents a
mile I think AAA says right now.
Mr. McNerney. Okay. All right. Mr. Chairman, I'll suppress
my next question and yield back.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. McNerney.
The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Babin, is recognized for his
questions.
Mr. Babin. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate
that and appreciate all of you witnesses. What a fascinating
topic.
Dr. Shin, is the United States maintaining its leadership
role in the growing and evolving market for this aviation
market? With regard to urban air mobility, will we be first to
launch operations or might we lose out to some other country?
And if so, what nation, and what are the consequences of not
being first?
Dr. Shin. Well, thank you for the question. I think it is
fair to say--and I do believe that the United States still is
leading the--this new potential market and capability from that
perspective because, as I said in the oral testimony, we have
the best minds and best technologies and best entrepreneur
spirit.
However, I even coined--I made up an English word called
most developed country syndrome, so we are the most developed
country in the world, and along with that, we have a lot of
interests that some other countries may not care that much or
they will be willing to relax some of those concerns. So the
name of the game in this area in my view is since entry cost is
very low compared to regular commercial airline business,
most--probably most developed countries or developing countries
can actually start this industry if they are willing to lower
or relax the constraints and issues from a regulatory
perspective, some safety perspective, and so on, so that is
indeed a concern. And as you all know, some of the countries
are jumping ahead and allowing even U.S. companies go to those
countries.
Mr. Babin. Who are those countries?
Dr. Shin. They are Australia, New Zealand, and some of the
European countries willing to do that, and Singapore or so--so
some of the countries--again, I'm not suggesting they are
lowering the safety standard, but they're willing to----
Mr. Babin. Okay.
Dr. Shin. --jump ahead. So that is a concern. But I do
believe we have the--still the way to scale this up, as Dr.
Allison and----
Mr. Babin. Okay.
Dr. Shin. --Ms. Dietrich talked about.
Mr. Babin. Thank you. Once the UAM system is in place and
multiple options exist for people to travel by air taxi, how
long will it take before people will be able to own and operate
their own VTOL vehicles? You may have already touched on this a
little bit. I had to leave the room. And how much more
complicated will it be to do the air-traffic control
management, Ms. Dietrich?
Ms. Dietrich. Yes, thank you for the question. I think that
many of us in this space are not anticipating a private
ownership model for the vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.
I think we're seeing those as probably being cost-prohibitive
for an individual owner, as well as if this system works the
way envisioned, it won't be necessary. You'll be able to get
the functionality without the headache and without the upfront
expense.
Mr. Babin. Right.
Ms. Dietrich. So I do expect that these vehicles will be
really dramatically increasing the number of aircraft that we
see in the general aviation industry. My company alone is
looking at deliveries on the order of a few thousand a year.
That's currently basically the entire size of the GA industry
each year. So this industry will rapidly become more of the
norm than what we see in legacy aircraft today, and I think
we're going to have to be conscious of that as we think about
new constructs of both ownership and usage of these vehicles in
that what folks typically think of as smaller planes in general
aviation today will become a small piece of a much larger
industry that brings the benefits of transportation by small
aircraft to many more people but is not what we currently think
of.
Mr. Babin. Okay. Thank you. And Mr. McNerney had touched on
this a little while ago, but just to be more specific,
cybersecurity is a topic of serious concern whenever we discuss
technologies, especially those that are new and nascent. How
will the VTOL vehicles be protected from cybersecurity attacks,
and who will be responsible for that protection? Will it be the
vehicle manufacturer, the company that runs the operating
system, the FAA, or someone else? And who would like to respond
to that? Dr. Clarke?
Dr. Clarke. Sure. I'm a faculty member, you know. We
always----
Mr. Babin. Right.
Dr. Clarke. So precedence is that the operators ultimately
are going to be the ones that are responsible. I'll give you a
quick example. Every 28 days, we update the database of
waypoints in the country that goes into flight management
system, and even though the person putting it in might actually
make a mistake, if something happens, it's the operator of the
airline that's responsible because----
Mr. Babin. Sure.
Dr. Clarke. --they need to check. So they actually have
staff members checking that database every 28 days, so that's
what precedent would suggest. Ultimately, it's going to be a
partnership. The one thing about aviation is that it truly has
been and will continue to be a partnership between regulators,
operators, and manufacturers. And there--like I said, there are
people doing work, which I can't talk about, on the
cybersecurity issue, but there are--they're going to be--it's
going to be a partnership, and people are going to basically
figure out how to do some tests of things coming in and out.
Communication is one thing. There are companies thinking about
using in-flight entertainment systems for doing communications
of flight-critical information. There are people working on how
to do that and keeping track of whether there's been nefarious
tampering with the----
Mr. Babin. Okay.
Dr. Clarke. --data, et cetera.
Mr. Babin. Okay. Thank you very much. And I yield back, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Babin.
The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Lamb, is recognized,
and I have a quick question for him. Did you hear you were
going to get a flying car if you attended the hearing today?
Mr. Lamb. Well, I actually came here in a flying car, but
it was a little late so that was why I showed up a little late,
so I guess there's more research----
Chairman Smith. I just want you to know there's only three
left but you made it.
Mr. Lamb. Oh, wow. Okay. Dr. Clarke--or anybody can take
this but I wanted to address it first to Dr. Clarke. This
actually seems like an industry that could create a fair number
of jobs both in terms of the operators themselves, the
engineers, designers, manufacturers. Does anyone have a sense
of the potential impact in terms of numbers of jobs that we
could be talking about, let's say, in the next decade?
Dr. Clarke. I can't give you specific numbers so--but I can
tell you that I've been a faculty member for 21 years. This is
the most excited I've ever seen students around aviation. I
mean, people are always excited about space, but this is the
most excited I've seen people around aviation. And you know I
think there's a great potential for jobs. I mean, I have
undergrad students who are thinking about doing a startup. In
fact, they've been building a wind tunnel in somebody's--they
are looking for a flying vehicle which looks like a motorcycle,
and they're trying to figure out where to move that wind
tunnel. In fact, they sent me a message like, ``Do you know
somebody where we can move this wind tunnel?'' They're funding
themselves, so there's a great excitement. There's great
potential.
And, you know, to Uber's credit, they have basically said
we're not going to build a vehicle but we're going to provide
specifications and leave it out there for lots of others to do
that.
And the--you know, the challenge, the Boeing challenge
around a flying motorcycle, that's generated a great deal of
interest. And so I think the potential for jobs are tremendous.
I can't give you a number because that's not--maybe the guys
here who--will know how many people they're going to hire will
tell you.
Mr. Lamb. Anyone? Anyone have----
Ms. Dietrich. I can offer a little bit of information. So
since Terrafugia has really entered this space, we've been
hiring on average five people a week, and we don't have plans
to slow that down. So that's just one company.
I would say that we're probably talking--when this industry
is mature across all of the participants--between two and three
orders of magnitude larger than the existing GA industry just
to give you a sense.
Mr. Lamb. And what about in terms of encouraging domestic
manufacturing of all the equipment that we're going to need for
this and the supply chain? Anyone have any thoughts on that?
Mr. Thacker?
Mr. Thacker. Yes, so, again, you think about the production
volumes for existing aviation, general aviation in particular
on--in numbers of tens, if you're at 100 a year, you're having
a pretty stellar year. Maybe at the smaller end of light GA,
you get into a few hundred a year. When you're talking about
hundreds to thousands a year of somewhat larger vehicles that
we're discussing here, it's a tremendous opportunity from a
manufacturing standpoint for our country as well.
Mr. Lamb. Anyone else?
Dr. Allison. Just to amplify that a little bit, from our
perspective we've been doing a lot of demand studies, so we've
built these demand models. We look at trip flow. I actually
presented some of this at the event in the spring for the L.A.
region. But our studies suggest that at scale when this network
is fully developed and it's soaking up, you know, possibly even
double-digit percentages of overall trip flow in a region like
L.A., that you could be talking about not just thousands but
tens of thousands of vehicles active, enough demand to support
that.
Now, it would take a lot of time to get there, obviously,
building out the network, but that's an incredible number
compared to what the industry can produce right now. And so we
have to see this industry grow significantly, as Ms. Dietrich
said, multiple orders of magnitude, and it makes a lot of sense
to produce these vehicles closer to where you're deploying them
as well from a logistics standpoint because they're generally
larger than cars and harder to ship and things like that, so I
think there's going to be a lot of impetus to build out
manufacturing capabilities here in the U.S. to be able to
produce the volumes that this service or this type of
transportation will demand.
Mr. Lamb. Dr. Shin?
Dr. Shin. Yes, if I can just add one more point, I think it
is important for all of us to recognize that when we use urban
air mobility, it truly includes from smallest UAS to air taxi
and personal air vehicles and commuters and all those things
that truly changing the landscape of aviation today. So as you
are probing about the jobs and supply chains and all that, I
think we need to really look at the holistic way of package
delivery to passenger carrying small and large. And another
question about the rural area, all these things should be
considered as this air mobility. For the time being, we're
using urban air mobility, but I think that opens up all these
possibilities.
Mr. Lamb. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield the remainder of
my time.
Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Lamb.
The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Webster, is recognized for
his questions.
Mr. Webster. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for doing this
committee hearing and presentation. This is an awesome and very
interesting subject.
Dr. Clarke, I went to Georgia Tech, so we've sort of
crossed paths. And Representative Massie, who was here earlier,
went to MIT when you did. He was a double-E. But anyway, we're
glad you're here. I got an opportunity to speak to the
graduating class last year in the May graduation. That was a
real thrill.
Anyway, you mentioned in your presentation four different--
well, not obstacles, hurdles, let's say--to cross. Do you see
any of those that are insurmountable?
Dr. Clarke. No, I do not. I think they're all doable. I
will say, you know, one of the things--the whole issue of
autonomous operations versus decision-making is one of those
that is particularly challenging because, you know, a lot of
the things that people think about autonomy is really
autonomous operations, you know, it's computer code, it's been
validated, verified. It operates under certain conditions, and
when things are unusual or in a situation it doesn't--it says,
``I can't do anymore; I give up.''
Mr. Webster. That'd be a little scary.
Dr. Clarke. It is a little scary. And so there is work--I
just--the National Science Foundation just announced a major
program on autonomous decision-making just this past week where
they're trying to actually get the fundamental research done
and to basically decide how systems should decide to operate.
So, you know, I think the ultimate idea or exemplar of what
autonomous decision-making are kids. I have twins and they're
11 and they're getting to that stage where they're getting to
the autonomous decision-making. And you always think of
yourself, which you've basically given them, you know, life
lessons. You teach them how to think, not what to think but how
to think, and that's really the great challenge in autonomy,
teaching or building systems that actually learn and adapt and
can adapt to situations they have not seen before. And so
that's the challenge that I think is one of the biggest ones,
but there is work being done both at NASA but, like I said, the
National Science Foundation just launched a major effort in
this area, and I don't think it's insurmountable. It shouldn't
surprise you that I have some ideas about how to solve that
problem. So I don't think it's insurmountable.
Mr. Webster. So do you see them running on parallel tracks
and like they could be separate solutions to each one, not
necessarily waiting on the other one to be solved?
Dr. Clarke. Right. No, and that will be the case and that
has been the case where, for example, in autonomous cars we
have a lot of algorithms in place that only operate under
certain conditions, and when they get close to the edge, they
basically say to some human supervisor, look, I can't get a
solution.
I personally believe that autonomy is more than just
handing it over to the human when you can't figure it out. I
think, you know, there's lots of opportunities for autonomous
systems to help humans identify when they're getting close to
the edge and basically staying away from the edge. And so
there's--there are opportunities in the near term to introduce
autonomy within limited settings but then gradually increase
the level until the point where we get to full autonomous
decision-making.
Mr. Webster. Do you have any predictions on when that point
will be?
Dr. Clarke. When? My usual guess is around ten years, five
to ten years, given the level of effort that is now--that I'm
now seeing starting to pick up. Obviously, that will be--have
to be a sustained effort to keep it going, but I think five to
ten years we will get to the point where we'll have autonomous
decision-making at the level that I would feel comfortable
getting--I mean, getting on an airplane without having to worry
about that.
Mr. Webster. You'd be willing to get on it and ride it?
Dr. Clarke. Oh, yes.
Ms. Dietrich. If I may build on that just briefly, we're
taking an approach with our designs that allow this spectrum to
happen organically, so initially, we are going to have a
commercial pilot on board the aircraft that's responsible for
the flight operations. We are also going to have in parallel
with that pilot all the sensors and autonomy routines running
in the background. So we'll be able to be collecting data on
what that system is doing and comparing it to what the pilot is
doing, and they'll be able to help each other. And as we gain
more and more confidence as this progression happens, we'll be
able to allocate more and more responsibilities to the system
itself. But we're not going to wait for the magic day when all
of a sudden, ooh, it's done. We're working on that progression
in an organic way for product rollout.
Mr. Webster. Okay. I yield back. Thank you all so much.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Webster.
The gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Norman, is
recognized for his questions.
Mr. Norman. Thank you all for being here. This is
fascinating. It really is.
You know, in what you're doing, you're going to be facing--
I guess dealing with a lot of regulatory agencies both on a
federal level, state level, and local level. How do you
navigate that? And this is really for anybody. When do you
start the process? Because it looks like it would be a
challenge.
Mr. Thacker. So I'm sure multiple people will have
comments, but I think the key is you start early, you start
now. We've already started. I think from a vehicle and
operations standpoint, it's really important to get the whole
FAA involved and to get a consistent outcome. We saw that with
the drone as well when eventually the FAA basically put in
place a structure that it was able to pull across all of the
vehicle--the flight standards operation side and air traffic to
help move that forward. We need to do that at the outset here
to make sure that we have consistent regulation across those
and we don't overburden any individual part of the system.
And then we need to be involved in communities. That's why
with Uber, you know, we've had outreach to Los Angeles, to
Dallas-Fort Worth areas where we can start the conversation,
understand the community needs, make sure that we're reacting
to those.
The last thing that we need is to have a patchwork of
requirements across the country. We really need to have some
consistency that allows us to execute in a scaled kind of way
with the same vehicles, the same sort of operational models
tailored locally with vertiport locations and things like that
to manage noise, privacy, and other concerns but a consistent
overall model from a regulatory standpoint, as well as from an
operational standpoint.
Dr. Shin. If I may build on Mr. Thacker's point, last point
that this is a golden opportunity for the country that we can
actually do this together in a very concerted and systematic
manner. We don't have to repeat the same way that, as you
mentioned, the patch jobs that we did 60, 70 years ago. So I
think in the vehicle certification side, industry has been
working really hard to get there, and I'm very optimistic that
industry partners will get there. And from a government
perspective, FAA and NASA have been working really well
together to enable this new capability.
So I think, again, my point is this is one chance that we
can actually design the system right and everybody, public and
private, working together to come up with the robust system as
best as we can design and from the get-go. So I think we're all
working together. We're just representing various small
segments of the community, but I can assure you that a lot of
entities are working together in this field.
Dr. Clarke. I would add that, you know, you can never start
speaking to regulators early enough when it comes to aviation
in the sense because you're always pushing the envelope and
you're all bringing technology to the--for which they don't
necessarily have expertise in-house. And so that's one of the
foremost reasons for starting early.
I think in this case, you know, as I said earlier, I see a
model for--a cable model for air-traffic control services just
because it's just not practical in my view to have the FAA
doing air-traffic management inside urban air sections. So I
think there's going to be a new sense for certification, for
certifying the companies and the entities that are doing the
air-traffic management, which we haven't had to do before
because that was all internal to the FAA. So I think there's
going to be a need for regulations and processes for making
sure that the folks who are actually managing the traffic are
doing so in the way that you would like them to.
So that's one area which I think is slightly different than
we've had before in aviation where, you know, it was just about
the vehicles and the operators but not about air-traffic
control. Now, we'll have to be able to do certification around
it, and we'll have to make it nimble. You know, one of the
things about aviation is we have very rigorous standards and
implicitly--and in some cases explicitly--we get some release
on liability.
Some of those standards are quite onerous and take a long
time, and if you want not--if we don't want to throttle the
growth of this industry, we'll have to figure out a model that
is more nimble in regards to certification. And that's
something that I think will require some legislation at some
point.
Mr. Norman. I think that's where Congress comes in because
we represent different constituencies, and we'll have a lot of
concerns, both positive and negative. What about other
countries? Technology-wise, it looks like that would be an area
that you could collaborate with. Are you doing any of that with
other nations?
Ms. Dietrich. I will say that from a regulatory perspective
we've had a lot of cooperation from other international civil
aviation authorities, particularly EASA, so the new Part 23,
Amendment 64, is harmonized with CS-23, Amendment 5, so that is
very beneficial for the industry at large.
Mr. Norman. Yes, I wasn't talking about regulations. I was
mainly thinking about technology-wise. I know as I get around
my district a lot of the machinery comes from Germany, other
countries. Is this something that you could possibly get with
other nations on to look at?
Dr. Shin. So NASA is a member of 26 member-states, an
organization called International Forum for Aviation Research,
so we--NASA was a founding member, along with the German
aerospace agency some ten years ago when we formed this. The
members are all government-backed or sponsored research
organizations, so we're working to find out what the
precompetitive but common technologies that we can raise the
water level together and also harmonizing some of the
technologies as standard possibly. So we're working with them
and also we're working heavily with FAA, which represents the
United States to the International Civil Aviation Organization,
as Ms. Dietrich mentioned.
So a lot of work needs to be done, and I think you're
pointing out very important points. Still a lot needs to be
done, but I think the necessary part is working together.
Mr. Norman. Well, thank you so much. I yield back, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Norman.
The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Dunn, is recognized for his
questions.
Mr. Dunn. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for having
this meeting. I mean, really, thank you. This is so fun. This
is catnip to aviation enthusiasts.
So like many of us, you know, I've spent hours poring over
Popular Mechanics magazines, many of which were printed before
anybody on the panel was born, pictures of flying cars and, you
know, looking at that stuff, so it's exciting to actually have
a chance to look at this in a--can I call this a professional
manner?
My wife and sons, they fly. I'm not a pilot, but they all
are, and we've flown into Oshkosh for fun a number of times.
Oshkosh started yesterday, by the way. If I was there right
now, could I be shopping for flying cars? Panel, anybody know?
Ms. Dietrich. Terrafugia has an exhibit there.
Mr. Dunn. I could be shopping for a flying car today if I
was in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Let the record reflect that. That's
just amazing, so cool. So I'm not going to ask any technical
questions. I think you guys are smarter than me. You could
solve all the FAA questions and, you know, the hybrid and
everything and the balance weight. I think you're going to have
to have autonomous because, let's face it, you know, flying
planes is serious business.
But what I want to know from this very learned panel is, of
all these examples of flying cars here, which one or two do you
want the most? And I just want you to go right down the panel,
tell me which one you think is the coolest. Start with you, Dr.
Shin.
Dr. Shin. As a government person, I shouldn't----
Mr. Dunn. See, everybody likes one. All right. What do
you----
Dr. Shin. But I--not generically, I like intermodal
convenient way to do this, so whatever the designs may be and
whatever the companies may be, it should be very--from my door
at the home and----
Mr. Dunn. Okay. So all the way, door-to-door. Okay. That's
great. Sort of The Jetsons thing, right? Did you like the Aston
Martin version? That's pretty cool, huh?
Dr. Shin. I'm a little bit of a car nut, so that was really
fancy that they put on.
Mr. Dunn. Dr. Clarke?
Dr. Clarke. So I have mixed minds here because, as Ms.
Dietrich will tell you, I used to teach her husband when he was
an undergrad. And, as Dr. Allison will tell you, my--one of my
Ph.D. students is his lead analyst and optimizer and modeler,
so I have interest in both solutions.
I got to tell you, Mr. Chairman, I--and other members, I am
a James Bond fan----
Mr. Dunn. I knew it.
Dr. Clarke. --and I'm also a Jetsons fan, so I actually
like the idea of being able to leave your house and basically
be able to go from door-to-door. I mean--
Mr. Dunn. Door-to-door.
Dr. Clarke. --door-to-door is the ultimate, right? That's
what we care about.
Mr. Dunn. That's it. So--well, Mr. Allison, do you care to
respond?
Dr. Allison. So we have five amazing vehicle partners with
Uber Elevate, and I'm very excited to see all five of those
vehicles fly sometime soon.
Mr. Dunn. So you don't have one that you would maybe want
to tuck in the garage first?
Dr. Allison. I'm very excited to see all of them fly, but
Mr. Thacker's vehicle from Bell will also be one of the great
ones.
Mr. Dunn. Outstanding.
Mr. Thacker. I'm obviously biased towards the Bell
solution, and I do believe that the air taxi will bring a
sweeping change to how we move about cities, and I'm excited
about that one because I think it will be here sooner than the
door-to-door solution, and it's something that all of us will
be able to take part in. So--and if you'd like to experience
that, we have a virtual experience that I welcome any of you to
come take when you get the chance.
Mr. Dunn. Will you share the information with the staff so
they can get it to us?
Mr. Thacker. Absolutely.
Mr. Dunn. Thank you. So that will be very important. So,
please----
Ms. Dietrich. Well, I have----
Mr. Dunn. --solve my dilemma. Pick one for me.
Ms. Dietrich. I was one of the founders of Terrafugia
specifically because I wanted a Transition, so fortunately,
next year, I should be able to get to really fly a Transition
again and use that vehicle a little bit. It's not quite the
urban mobility that we're talking about, but to be able to fly
and drive the same vehicle, I'm very excited about that.
Building and flying a vehicle that I helped create was one of
my career goals.
Mr. Dunn. I agree. Okay. I have a very large district, and
I think you've just solved one of the problems I have here.
Now, which one of these should I choose to commute across a
district that's 350 miles long, eight hours of driving on the
interstate, more if you take the back roads, lots of back
roads, lots of farms?
Ms. Dietrich. Well, I would recommend a TF-2 for you, and
that----
Mr. Dunn. TF-2. Write this down.
Ms. Dietrich. The 200-mile minimum range with a ground
vehicle integration so you'll be able to get the back roads and
the vertical flight component.
Mr. Dunn. What options should I order?
Ms. Dietrich. We can talk about customization.
Mr. Dunn. Mr. Chairman, let me say thank you again for
having this meeting. It's been one of the high points of my
time in Congress. I yield back.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. I think she'll offer
you a discount, but that's another story.
Now, Ms. Bonamici--before I recognize the gentlewoman from
Oregon, did you come for the free flying car or did you come--
we only have two left, so we're getting to the end here.
Ms. Bonamici. I----
Chairman Smith. The gentlewoman----
Ms. Bonamici. I wish I could say yes, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Smith. The gentlewoman is recognized.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And my apologies for
not being here for your testimony. I was in another committee,
which is not nearly as much fun. No one was laughing there.
But thank you so much for your testimony, which I have
looked through. And I--you know, I frequently hear from my
constituents out in northwest Oregon. They complain to us about
everything but including traffic. And I hear from communities
and businesses and individuals about the need to invest in
infrastructure and how we put people back to work and how do we
move people, how do we move goods. And my vision for
infrastructure isn't just limited to roads and bridges. We need
to invest in new transportation policy, new transportation
infrastructure from high-speed rail to bicycle pedestrian
pathways, and I'm interested in hearing from you about
expanding this vision to include urban air mobility. I'm sure
it's something that would be quite popular in the Pacific
Northwest.
One of the things I want to get to also is that I think the
workforce in this field is going to need to be innovative and
entrepreneurial, and I can tell that from your testimony, which
I read. Those characteristics require creative and critical
thinking. I also work on a lot of education issues, and I'm the
Co-Chair and the founder of the bipartisan STEAM Caucus with
Representative Stefanik from New York where we're working on
ways that we can educate people who are creative and innovative
through integration of arts and design in traditional STEM
fields.
I want to ask Dr. Clarke, what steps is the aviation
research community making to make sure that students get the
well-rounded education for the urban air mobility industry, and
how--especially how those efforts might change as technology
develops? How are you educating, you know, creative critical
thinkers?
Dr. Clarke. Thank you for the question, Congresswoman. One
of the things that we're doing, first of all, is a lot of the
universities, including my own, have been changing the
curriculum and updating the curriculum over time to include
more what would--I would say holistic topics. And the second
thing is that we've also been trying to introduce a lot more
the idea of innovation and--at the undergraduate level to try
to--I was mentioning earlier before you stepped in that I've
never seen the level of excitement that it is now amongst
aerospace students in particular and the fact that people are
out there starting companies or are coming up with ideas and
trying to look for investors around new types of vehicles. So
from the educational perspective moving beyond just, you know,
engineering, science and the ``here's an equation, here's the
solution to the equation and that's the end,'' it's thinking
about the economic implications, thinking about the regulatory
implications, bringing those in. And to credit ABET, which is
the accreditation agency, has been pushing that for the last
decade or more.
And then--but there's definitely an emphasis--I know at
Georgia Tech we are trying to make sure that every graduate of
Georgia Tech has some thought and has given some thought and
has done something around innovation and basically
entrepreneurship, which I think goes towards, again, generating
jobs and opportunities in the United States.
Ms. Bonamici. So that's great to hear. We've had many
conversations about how do we educate people today for the jobs
that we can't imagine?
Dr. Clarke. Right, right.
Ms. Bonamici. In your testimony you talk about, all of you,
your version for urban air mobility will eventually lead to
autonomous vehicles hovering just hundreds of feet above us. I
remember in Portland when they built an aerial tram to get from
one part of the medical school to another and people who lived
underneath it panicked, and of course with the UAV
conversation. Can you elaborate on what steps you are taking to
protect the privacy of consumers and individuals affected in
the surrounding flight path, whoever wants to weigh in on that?
Dr. Clarke. Well, I mean, for me I think the steps that
need to be taken are pretty straightforward. We don't
understand that trade-off between utility and privacy that is
inherent in every one of us. I've spent time in the
Netherlands, and they have great open windows and--in big--in
cities in the Netherlands, and that's when I realized that
privacy is a different thing than anonymity, so that's one
thing that we have to really understand.
And then the second is what's that trade-off that--what are
people willing to give up for the utility? That's another
thing. I mean, people give up lots of information on their cell
phones and stuff because they find it useful, and so that's
something that needs to be understood. Once we have that, we
can actually start doing modeling and optimizing where we put
vertiports, what kind of trajectories need to be put in place,
so it's a three-step process, figuring out what people--what
that trade-off is, figuring out the models to model it and then
optimizing.
Ms. Bonamici. In the remaining few seconds, anybody want to
weigh in on changes we might need to make as we're considering
infrastructure investments?
Dr. Allison. So, thank you, Congresswoman, for the
question. We think about this very much as multimodal
solutions, and so Uber is interested in different modes of
transportation and recently introducing bikes on our app. We
see Elevate the same way, that this is a type of transit system
that will integrate into other things, and it introduces one
key feature that is not available right now in most of the
transportation system, which is that the cost of building out
this type of infrastructure doesn't scale by the--per foot of
road you lay or track you lay or tunnel you dig perhaps. It
scales with the nodes that you put in, and so it's a nodal-
scaling network. So the cost-scaling is very different than the
way we think about transportation system and cost-scaling right
now, and we think that will be a key feature down the road, so
to speak, of how this type of a system integrates into the rest
of the transportation system writ large.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Bonamici.
This concludes our hearing today, and I just want to thank
all of our expert witnesses for being here and for their
testimony. Obviously, this is inspirational and soon to be--we
hope--real-time and realistic.
And we're going to do something we haven't done before,
which is to make a presentation to you all. So if you will stay
close to the table, here's the beginning of what we're going to
present you. And let me say if you can't take it with you--and
that would be totally understandable--we'll figure out a way to
get it to you one way or the other, or maybe you can figure
that out, too.
So I'll come around and hand you the package with the
flying car. By the way, the flying car has its wings out as you
get it, but the wings actually collapse and fold vertically
against the body of the car, and you simply push one button and
the wings come out horizontal, and you're off the ground in 15
feet. You can't beat it.
I do not get a commission. Actually, I don't know who makes
them exactly.
Dr. Clarke. Mr. Chairman, I would--Mr. Chairman, you have
now introduced a problem in my household because I have twin
boys but----
Chairman Smith. Oh, they'll love it.
Let's see. The record will remain open for two weeks for
additional written comments and written questions from members.
And we stand adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:54 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
Appendix I
----------
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[all]