Middle East: “Air Taxis a Major Agenda at Qatar NDS3 Event”

The Third Qatar Nation­al Devel­op­ment Strat­e­gy (NDS3) event held vir­tu­al­ly, focused on the ben­e­fits from advanced tech­nolo­gies and achiev­ing sus­tain­able devel­op­ment and eco­nom­ic diver­si­fi­ca­tion “to fur­ther boost Qatar’s lead­ing glob­al posi­tion on the trans­porta­tion map,” reports thepeninsulaqatar.com.

This recent meet­ing was the first ses­sion of the Autonomous e‑Mobility (AEMOB) Forum series enti­tled ‘The Future of Air Mobil­i­ty: Inno­va­tions & Emerg­ing Trends’. 

It cov­ered the ele­ments shap­ing the field of air mobil­i­ty includ­ing an imple­men­ta­tion of air taxis in 2025, stan­dards and poli­cies, mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion, soci­etal incor­po­ra­tion, and the tech­ni­cal chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties in the field.

Shahram Tah­masse­by, a research asso­ciate at the Qatar Trans­porta­tion and Traf­fic Safe­ty Cen­tre, high­light­ed the inte­gra­tion of autonomous air taxis to the net­work in the coun­try dur­ing the Webi­nar. He spoke about the chal­lenges and obsta­cles which includ­ed infra­struc­ture require­ments, reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work, safe­ty stan­dards and tech­no­log­i­cal inte­gra­tion.

Tah­masse­by told the vir­tu­al audi­ence that “tech­nol­o­gy inte­gra­tion and advance­ment in dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy requires advanced nav­i­ga­tion sys­tems. That autonomous and the semi-autonomous oper­a­tion of air taxis could be achieved by util­i­sa­tion of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and advanced nav­i­ga­tion sys­tems to enable autonomous or semi-autonomous flights, reduc­ing the need for human pilots and increas­ing oper­a­tional per­for­mance.”

Doha

He went on to say “the inte­gra­tion of real-time data ana­lyt­ics and machine learn­ing to opti­mise flight paths and man­age air traf­fic dynam­i­cal­ly is also impor­tant” and that “pub­lic and pri­vate part­ner­ships can be achieved by encour­ag­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion between gov­ern­ment agen­cies such as the Min­istry of Trans­port (MoT), Oore­doo, Voda­fone and Mowasalat along­side pri­vate com­pa­nies such as Uber and an assort­ment of star­tups to fund and devel­op air taxi infra­struc­ture to ensure broad access and ser­vice dis­tri­b­u­tion.”

Infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment was also dis­cussed includ­ing the design­ing of ver­ti­ports and vertistops. These facil­i­ties, explained Tah­masse­by, could be locat­ed in pop­u­lar and large foot­fall areas such as Doha West Bay, Doha Port, Doha Air­port, Lusail, Al Wakra, Al Khor and Sal­wa Beach. 

Tah­masse­by added that “to ensure a suc­cess­ful inte­gra­tion of air taxis in Qatar’s trans­port sys­tem (or any coun­try in gen­er­al) includes smart city inte­gra­tion, smart­phone based tool, and eco­nom­ic and social con­sid­er­a­tions.”

While smart­phone based tools and plat­forms such as SILA (a trav­el plan­ner by MoT) can be used for the devel­op­ment of user-friend­ly mobile appli­ca­tions for book­ing, track­ing and pay­ing for air taxi rides, inte­grat­ing them with exist­ing ride-shar­ing and pub­lic trans­porta­tion apps. Autonomous air taxi ser­vices infor­ma­tion could be includ­ed into the SILA plat­form.

The MoT recent­ly formed plans to tri­al the use of elec­tric air taxis and deliv­ery drones dur­ing the ear­ly part of next year. This deci­sion was impressed upon them due to the rapid advances present­ly being made in oth­er regions of the Mid­dle East like Sau­di Ara­bia and the UAE.

Shahram Tah­masse­by

Tah­masse­by fur­ther explained that tran­sit hubs were impor­tant to inte­grate the exist­ing Doha trans­porta­tion sys­tems. Ver­ti­ports required to be inte­grat­ed with exist­ing hubs such as the Hamad Inter­na­tion­al Air­port and the DECC, al Aziziya and Leghte­fiya Metro sta­tions.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.qu.edu.qa/sites/en_US/research/Qatar-Transportation-and-Traffic-Safety-Center

(News Source: https://thepeninsulaqatar.com)

(Top image: Krish­na Prasad/Fast Com­pa­ny Mid­dle East)

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