A personal air vehicle or PAV, also personal aerial vehicle, is a class of light general aviation aircraft which meets design and performance goals intended to make flying as commonplace as driving. NASA, in 2005, refined the definition of a PAV in the fifth Centennial Challenge initiative, which it funds in conjunction with the CAFE Foundation.
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The fundamental premise of this technology is to make a reduction in the skills required to operate an aircraft. The goal being a “highway in the sky” scenario where an individual is able to fly from point to point with the ease of driving an automobile.
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 .
A pure Synthetic Vision System infrastructure does not exist for general aviation aircraft. Current implementations of "Glass Cockpits" are now being adopted by general aircraft manufactures such as Cirrus Aircraft, Piper, Cessna, and Beechcraft.
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. See FAA NGATS Modeling by NASA and others have shown that PAV's using new smaller community airports would reduce traffic into larger airports serving the commercial fleet.
Of the two methods proposed for providing “door-to-door” capabilities, only the roadable option can be achieved utilizing existing airport facilities and ordinary roads. Currently, the only vehicles able to legally take off and land from a residential street are life-flight helicopters via special permission granted by the FAA on a case-by-case basis. In order to meet the goals set by NASA, thousands of small residential airports would be required.
Community noise generated by aircraft is a factor for residential PAVs. 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 made in making helicopters and jets 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.[1]
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.[2][3]
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.[4] 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:
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.[6] 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.[7]
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: