A personal air vehicle or PAV, also personal aerial vehicle, is an emergent aviation market that would provide on-demand aviation services. This term was first used by NASA in 2003 when it established the Personal Air Vehicle Sector Project, as part of the Aeronautics Vehicle Systems Program. This project was part of 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. Other names discussed include PIVITOLs (Personal Vertical TakeOff vehicles) Air-cars PACs (Personal AirCraft) AVs (Air Vehicles)
Contents
Origination
The first technical paper to explain the difference in vehicle characteristics between PAVs and existing General Aviation single engine piston aircraft was "Personal Air Vehicles: A Rural/Regional and Intra-Urban On-Demand Transportation System" by Mark D. Moore (the NASA PAV Sector Manager) from NASA Langley Research Center. This paper was presented in September 2003 at an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) conference as AIAA Paper 2003-2646. This paper established advanced concepts that would provide vehicle characteristics that dramatically enhanced the 1) Ease of Use, 2) Safety, 3) Efficiency, 4) Field Length Performance, and 5) Affordability. Many additional papers were presented at AIAA and Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) conferences through 2006 that further refined the definition of PAV capabilities, technologies, and concepts. In 2006 the Vehicle Systems Program 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 being provided for competitions in 2007 (Personal Air Vehicle Challenge, with $250,000 in prizes), 2008 (General Aviation Technology Challenge, $350,000 in prizes), and 2011 (Green Flight Challenge, $1,500,000 in prizes). All of these competitions were completed for NASA by the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation in Santa Rosa, California.
A new mode of transportation
Currently the doorstep-to-doorstep average speed for cars is 35 mph. In the greater Los Angeles area, this speed is predicted to degrade to 22 mph by year 2020. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) states that 6.7 billion US gallons (25,000,000 m3) of gasoline are wasted in traffic jams each year.
A future system of travel by PAVs avoids air traffic jams and can help to relieve those on highways.
PAV definition outline according to NASA
Some private companies are using their own criteria for vehicles in this general category.
Barriers to PAV vision
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) infrastructure is not currently capable of handling the increase in aircraft traffic that would be generated by PAVs. The FAA is planning the Next Generation Air Transportation System targeted for 2025 to expand and completely transform the current aged system. Modeling by NASA and others have shown that PAV's using smaller community airports would not interfere with traffic at larger airports serving the commercial fleet. Currently there are over 10,000 public and private small airports in the United States that could be used for this type of transportation, which is currently being underutilized primarily by recreational aircraft.
Community noise generated by aircraft is a factor for PAVs that would be operating in close proximity to homes and businesses with much greater regularity that existing recreational aircraft. Without lower noise levels enabling residential landing capabilities, any PAV must still take off and land at an FAA controlled airport or private airfield, where the higher sound levels of operating aircraft have been approved.
Studies have been performed to determine 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, called Continuous Descent Approach.
The European Union is funding a 3-leg €4.2m programme (under the Seventh Framework Programme) to study technologies and impacts for PAVs in a Personal Air Transport System; Human-aircraft interaction, Automation of aerial systems in cluttered environments, and Exploring the socio-technological environment.
Progress
Fulfillment of the NASA vision for PAVs is likely to unfold over several decades. Several vehicle types exist which strive to meet the PAV definition:
Most vehicles in the above category can not yet perform all of the requirements set by NASA. However, some vehicles falling under the above have already set-down fair all-round performance in all of NASA's requirements. Especially ultralight aircraft are of specific interest since their energy consumption is very low. Hybrid forms of the vehicle types above can also be useful. Some hybrid forms that exist are:
Driverless PAV's
Besides the fabrication of personal air vehicles, the creation of driverless systems for PAV's 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 PAV's. The PAV's are designated their own "lanes" in the sky, hereby ensuring the avoidance of possible collisions. In addition, the different PAV's are also capable of detecting each other and communicating with each other, further decreasing the risk of collisions.
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, CA.
In 2008 the challenge was renamed as the General Aviation Technology Challenge.
The new prizes were:
The winners were:
Other notable designs
In order of likelihood of being commercially realised for widespread adoption by minimally qualified users.
List of Personal Air Vehicles with VTOL capability (alphabetical order)
In order of recent commercial activity