Chinese society EHang has joined forces with LN Holdings, a travel agency, to add drone tourist transportation to the list of services offered at its hotels. The LN Garden hotel in the Chinese city of Nansha will become a sort of "test bed" where the testing of this unusual idea will take place.
Last Saturday, executives from EHang and LN Group signed an agreement to create infrastructure specifically for tourism drones, so hotel guests can take aerial tours, book their ride and wait their turn.
Journalists and industry insiders attending the signing ceremony had the opportunity to take a few short flights around the hotel in an EHang 216 drone taxi before a lavish (and vaguely kitschy) drone acrobatic light show.
The tourist taxi drones
The 216 EHang Autonomous Aircraft has two passenger capsules surrounded by eight arms, each with two rotors. The declared maximum speed of each of these tourist drones is 130 km / h, and the flight time is 20 minutes.
The Chinese departure of a tourist drone service anticipates other planned initiatives in the world (the most advanced is currently in Dubai). Unsurprisingly: The first passenger drone was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) of 2016 by Chinese entrepreneurs, was the Ehang 184 model.
Since then, the developers of passenger drones have worked to overcome many challenges: mainly noise, capacity and flight autonomy.
