There are talks of a revolutionary future for metropolitan air transportation. The idea is to use piloted air taxis and drones to deliver supplies. The system will result in significant changes, especially in emergency situations like medicinal deliveries. However, Daniel Cuppoletti, an aerospace engineer at the University of Cincinnati, feels that the idea presents a problem. The constant flying of these vehicles will create too much noise pollution.

The New Method

Cuppoletti first came across the idea at a 2018 summit run by Uber. Even though excited about the prospect, he thought that the specific problem of noise would be very hard to ignore, literally. He has been researching this issue with his colleagues in the university and found that even when connected to electric engines, the whoosh and whir of the propellers produce a lot of sound. Even The European Union’s Aviation Safety Agency has reported safety, noise, and security as the top three concerns for drones.

The Solution

Cuppoletti and his students recently presented their research at the Science and Technology Forum and Exposition. The research focuses on finding ways to reduce the noise made by drones. He uses methods like changing the configuration rotors, amongst other changes. Cuppoletti has stated that if the sound issue isn’t fixed before the plan is underway, it will either take a lot of money to fix it later or will narrow the market scope considerably.

An Alternate Fix

Another way is to ensure that the route taken by these air vehicles is already noisy. Antonio Torijs Martinez from the University of Salford in Manchester conducted an experiment to gauge the responses of people when faced with loud sounds. The results showed that participants became much less annoyed by the drone noises when they were in high traffic areas as opposed to quiet residential ones.

After the end of an interesting quarter in smartphone sales, Samsung has retaken its place as the leading smartphone company in the world. While Huawei moved back to second place, Xiaomi overtook Apple for the third spot, and Vivo established itself fifth.

The Switch of the Top Position Was Expected by Smartphone Market Experts

The way Samsung got back to the first place was not much of a surprise to people following the smartphone market. While Samsung captured nearly 23% market share, Huawei now represents around 15% of the share. This is a massive drop of 22% when compared to the situation last year. Experts point out that this can be majorly contributed to the U.S. trade ban, which does not allow American companies to work with Huawei.

Xiaomi managed to ship enough smartphones to take a bit more than 13% market share. This Chinese smartphone company continues to have a strong presence in both China and India, which propelled it to third place, going above the share of Apple for the first time.

Most Smartphone Companies Faced Many Challenges In 2020

In general, Apple had a very good quarter when it comes to everything but the iPhone. While it got just about 11% share, it is still significantly ahead of Vivo, which took about 8.9% of the market share. It could be said that given the nature of the market in 2020, it has been a tough quarter for all these companies. Both manufacturing and sales had to overcome many challenges in China, Europe, and the US. The iPhone 12 launch was postponed to October, and most other companies even launched their products in November.

Even though the results differ drastically from last year, the end of 2020 is actually a big recovery, especially for companies in key markets such as India. There, both Samsung and Xiaomi managed to mark good gains, and that shows in the numbers the companies reported. Reports also show that although so far, the consumer demand for 5G may be small, it will be an important driver for future growth.