A personal air vehicle (PAV) is a proposed class of passenger

aircraft An aircraft ( aircraft) is a vehicle that is able to flight, fly by gaining support from the Atmosphere of Earth, air. It counters the force of gravity by using either Buoyancy, static lift or the Lift (force), dynamic lift of an airfoil, or, i ...

providing on-demand air transport. The emergence of this alternative to traditional ground transport methods has been enabled by

unmanned aerial vehicle An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or unmanned aircraft system (UAS), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft with no human pilot, crew, or passengers onboard, but rather is controlled remotely or is autonomous.De Gruyter Handbook of Dron ...

technologies and

electric propulsion Spacecraft electric propulsion (or just electric propulsion) is a type of spacecraft propulsion technique that uses electrostatic or electromagnetic fields to accelerate mass to high speed and thus generating thrust to modify the velocity of a ...

. Barriers include

aviation safety Aviation safety is the study and practice of managing risks in aviation. This includes preventing aviation accidents and incidents through research, educating air travel personnel, passengers and the general public, as well as the design of airc ...

, airworthiness, operating costs,

usability Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a softw ...

, airspace integration,

aircraft noise Aircraft noise pollution refers to noise produced by aircraft in flight that has been associated with several negative stress-mediated health effects, from sleep disorders to cardiovascular disorders. Governments have enacted extensive control ...

and emissions, tackled first by small UAS certification then experience.

Definition

There is no fully accepted definition as yet of a personal air vehicle (PAV). Typically it is understood to be an autonomous electric aircraft with point-to-point VTOL capability. It may or may not be treated as a single-seat autonomous electric vehicle, as distinguished from the multi-seat

eVTOL An electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft is a variety of VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) aircraft that uses electric power to hover, takeoff and landing, take off, and land vertically. This technology came about owing to m ...

. It is intended to provide flight convenience similar to the private car in terms of accessibility and ease of operation, while also offering the speed and routing efficiencies made possible by direct point-to-point flight. The PAV differs from conventional

general aviation General aviation (GA) is defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as all civil aviation aircraft operations except for commercial air transport or aerial work, which is defined as specialized aviation services for other ...

types in being usable by people with no pilot qualifications.

Characteristics

Autonomy

Besides the fabrication of personal air vehicles, the creation of autonomous systems for PAVs is also being researched. First off, synthetic vision electronic flight instrument systems (EFIS) as Highway in the sky (HITS) makes it much easier to control aircraft. Also, Phantom Works is working on designing a system that allows to automate PAVs. The PAVs are designated their own "lanes" in the sky, thereby ensuring the avoidance of possible collisions. In addition, the different PAVs are also capable of detecting each other and communicating with each other, further decreasing the risk of collisions.

Issues

Air traffic control

The

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is a Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government agency within the United States Department of Transportation, U.S. Department of Transportation that regulates civil aviation in t ...

(FAA) infrastructure is not currently capable of handling the increase in aircraft traffic that would be generated by PAVs. The FAA plan to upgrade forms the Next Generation Air Transportation System, planned for 2025. An interim plan is to use smaller airports. Modeling by NASA and others have shown that PAVs using smaller community airports would not interfere with commercial traffic at larger airports. Currently there are over 10,000 public and private small airports in the United States that could be used for this type of transportation. This infrastructure is currently underutilized, used primarily by recreational aircraft.

Noise

Noise from PAVs could also upset communities if they operate near homes and businesses. Without lower noise levels that enable residential landings, any PAV must take off and land at an FAA-controlled airfield, where higher sound levels have been approved. Studies have explored ways to make helicopters and aircraft less noisy, but noise levels remain high. In 2005 a simple method of reducing noise was identified: Keep aircraft at a higher altitude during landing. This is called a Continuous Descent Approach (CDA).

Range

Many proposed PAV aircraft are based on electric batteries, however they have low range due to the low

specific energy Specific energy or massic energy is energy per unit mass. It is also sometimes called gravimetric energy density, which is not to be confused with energy density, which is defined as energy per unit volume. It is used to quantify, for example, st ...

of current batteries. This range may be insufficient to provide adequate safety margin to find a landing site in an emergency.

Fuel cell A fuel cell is an electrochemical cell that converts the chemical energy of a fuel (often hydrogen fuel, hydrogen) and an oxidizing agent (often oxygen) into electricity through a pair of redox reactions. Fuel cells are different from most bat ...

aircraft have been proposed as a solution to this issue, owing to the much higher specific energy of

hydrogen Hydrogen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol H and atomic number 1. It is the lightest and abundance of the chemical elements, most abundant chemical element in the universe, constituting about 75% of all baryon, normal matter ...

Safety

Urban flight safety is a well-known problem for regulators and industry. On May 16, 1977, the New York Airways accident of a Sikorsky S-61 helicopter shuttle from

John F. Kennedy International Airport John F. Kennedy International Airport is a major international airport serving New York City and its metropolitan area. JFK Airport is located on the southwestern shore of Long Island, in Queens, New York City, bordering Jamaica Bay. It is ...

, which landed on the roof of the Pan Am Building (now MetLife Building) when a landing gear collapsed and a detached rotor blade killed several people on the helipad and one woman on

Madison Avenue Madison Avenue is a north-south avenue in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, New York, that carries northbound one-way traffic. It runs from Madison Square (at 23rd Street) to meet the southbound Harlem River Drive at 142nd Stree ...

, ending that business for decades almost around the world. Current

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which Lift (force), lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning Helicopter rotor, rotors. This allows the helicopter to VTOL, take off and land vertically, to hover (helicopter), hover, and ...

accident rates would be insufficient for urban mobility. The Sikorsky S-92's safety-focused design still allows one fatal accident per million flight hours. This rate would lead to 150 accidents per year for 50,000 eVTOLs flying 3,000 hours a year. For Sikorsky Innovations, the emerging $30 billion urban air mobility market needs safety at least as good as FAR Part 29 governing over helicopters. By May 2018, Sikorsky flew an S-76 120 hours with full point-to-point, real time autonomous flight and

terrain Terrain (), alternatively relief or topographical relief, is the dimension and shape of a given surface of land. In physical geography, terrain is the lay of the land. This is usually expressed in terms of the elevation, slope, and orientati ...

avoidance the hard way, with Level A software and redundancy, with a safety pilot.

Sikorsky Aircraft Sikorsky Aircraft is an American aircraft manufacturer based in Stratford, Connecticut. It was established by the Russian-American aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky in 1923, and was among the first companies to manufacture helicopters for civilian ...

want to reach a vertical flight safety of one failure per 10 million hours on high-utilization platforms by combining current

rotorcraft A rotary-wing aircraft, rotorwing aircraft or rotorcraft is a heavier-than-air aircraft with rotor wing, rotary wings that spin around a vertical mast to generate lift (force), lift. Part 1 (Definitions and Abbreviations) of Subchapter A of Chapt ...

experience with advances in autonomous flight, airspace integration and

History

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

established the Personal Air Vehicle Sector Project in 2002, as part of their Vehicle Systems Program (VSP). This project was part of the NASA Vehicle Integration, Strategy, and Technology Assessment (VISTA) office, which also included sectors for Subsonic Transports, VTOL Aircraft, Supersonic Aircraft, and High Altitude Long Endurance Aircraft. The objective of each sector was to establish vehicle capability goals and the required technology investment strategies to achieve those breakthroughs. The difference in vehicle characteristics between PAVs and existing General Aviation single engine piston aircraft was set out in 2003 at an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) conference. Advanced concepts would be needed to dramatically enhance ease of use, safety, efficiency, field length performance, and affordability. In 2006 the VSP was replaced by new NASA Aeronautics initiatives. PAV technology development efforts at NASA shifted to a prize-based investment, with NASA Centennial Challenge Prize funds of $250,000 being provided for a Personal Air Vehicle Challenge in 2007.

Studies

The

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

is funding a 3-leg €4.2m study (under the

Seventh Framework Programme The Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development, also called Framework Programmes or abbreviated FP1 to FP9, are funding programmes created by the European Union/European Commission to support and foster research in the Europe ...

) of technologies and impacts for PAVs; Human-aircraft interaction, Automation of aerial systems in cluttered environments, and Exploring the socio-technological environment.Czyzewski, Andrew
Personal flying vehicles project aims to end road congestion
'' The Engineer (UK magazine)'', 22 June 2011. Accessed: 26 July 2011.myCopter
''

'', 2011. Accessed: 26 July 2011.

PAV challenge

NASA Langley has researched and prototyped the necessary PAV technologies and has dedicated the largest cash prize in the history of GA to the PAV that can demonstrate the best overall combination of performance. The PAV flight competition for this prize, known as the first annual PAV Challenge, was held Aug 4-12, 2007 and hosted the CAFE Foundation in Santa Rosa, California. In 2008 the challenge was renamed as the General Aviation Technology Challenge. The new prizes were: * The Community Noise Prize ($150,000) * The Green Prize ($50,000) (MPG) * The Aviation Safety Prize ($50,000) (Handling, eCFI) * The CAFE 400 Prize ($25,000) (Speed) * The Quietest LSA Prize ($10,000) The winners were: *Community Noise Lambada N109UA $20,000 *Green Prize no winner n/a *CAFE Safety Pipistrel N2471P $50,000 *CAFE 400 Pipistrel N2471P $2,000 *Quietest LSA Lambada N109UA $10,000 *Shortest Takeoff Pipistrel N2471P $3,750 *Best Angle of Climb Pipistrel N2471P $3,750 *Best Glide Ratio at 100 MPH Flightdesign CTSW N135CT $3,750 *Cabin Noise (tie) Lambada N109UA Pipistrel N2471P $3,750 ($1,875 each)

List of personal air vehicles

, - ! Type ! Country ! Class ! Date ! No. ! Status ! Notes , - , Airbus A³ Vahana , EU , Convertiplane , 2018 , 2 , Prototype , , - , AM-20 eVTOL , US , Lift-plus-cruise , 2019 , 1 , Prototype , Under development , - , Boeing Passenger Air Vehicle , US , Rotorcraft , 2019 , 1 , Prototype , , - , Carter PAV , US , Rotorcraft , 2011 , 2 , Prototype , , - , Volocopter 2X , Germany , Rotorcraft , 2016 , 2 , Prototype , Prototypes were the VC1 and VC200. , - , Wisk Cora , US , Rotorcraft , 2019 , 1 , Prototype , , - , Xplorair PX200 , France , Powered lift , , , Project , Hybrid jet powerplant , -