You might recall that earlier this year we reported on a Chinese company called Ehang. For those who forgot, this company creates drones and one of their drones is the Ehang 184 Autonomous Aerial Vehicle (AAV), which is basically a drone that is capable of carrying passengers, so in a way you could think of this as an remote pilot-less helicopter that can fly people around.
Now if you’re wondering when we can start getting ferried around in drones, it seems that progress is being made on that. In fact according to a report from the Las Vegas Review-Journal (via ArsTechnica), authorities from the Nevada Institute of Autonomous Systems has granted the company permission to fly their drone in the state for test flights.
However it seems that while they might have given them their permission, there still needs to be some accountability with the FAA, which the institute is more than happy to help them with. According to Mark Barker who is the director of the institute, “We will help them submit necessary test results and reports to the FAA and all that kind of stuff.”
He adds, “It’s a big deal for EHang and it’s a big deal for NIAS and the state of Nevada because we will be helping them to test and validate their system.” The company is hoping that should everything go according to plan that tests will be able to begin later this year.