The drone that can give you a ride

Ehang adds that in the event of your drone experiencing problems, human pilots housed in custom built "command centres" will be able to take over and guide you to safety. Of course, it would have to build such centres first.

Supposedly costing between £130,000 and £200,000 - a price tag which includes air conditioning and in-flight WiFi - Ehang 184 has caused a stir at CES, even though the aircraft has remained static on the show floor and not (yet?) soared into the show air with a human passenger inside.

Ehang's press site for the 184 craft goes into fairly exacting detail about the drone and the experience of flying one, going so far as to list the size of bag you can carry (16 inches) and the colour of the reading light ('custom made'). Of course much is unknown about the Ehang 184, too - not least how such a craft hopes to gain certification by international flight authorities in China, first, and then the US, New Zealand and Europe where Ehang plans to launch subsequently. The 184 would be impossible to fly legally in the UK under current regulations, and would need years of testing to get anywhere near a public rollout.

However, Ehang is not the only company working on human-carrying autonomous vehicles, with the US Navy and Near Earth Autonomy among those interested in the concept. Amazon is working hard to push regulators to think more creatively about how to build infrastructure for drones. Google is also attempting to develop new communications standards to form the backbone of the system. Someone will eventually build a working human-carrying drone, even if it proves Ehang are slightly more confident about the 184, in January 2016, than they should be.