#NASA Flies Drones Autonomously for Air Taxi Research

[michaelgabrill]

NASA Flies Drones Autonomously for Air Taxi Research

Researchers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia recently flew multiple drones beyond visual line of sight with no visual observer. The drones successfully flew around obstacles and each other during takeoff, along a planned route, and upon landing, all autonomously without a pilot controlling the flight. from NASA https://ift.tt/v1g0fQh

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Hampton VA (SPX) Dec 22, 2023 Researchers at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia recently flew multiple drones beyond visual line of sight with no visual observer. The drones successfully flew around obstacles and each other during takeoff, along a planned route, and upon landing, all autonomously without a pilot controlling the flight. This test marks an important step towards advancing self-flying capabilit

[nasa]

5 Ways NASA Technology is Shaping the Transportation of Tomorrow

We have always been in the transportation business, whether launching astronauts to the Moon or improving airplanes to make them fly faster and safer on less fuel. And whether directly – like more aerodynamic wings for passenger jets – or indirectly – like more comfortable driver seats in sedans – this is yet another way our innovations benefit the public.

Today, the world of transportation is on the brink of some big changes. Drones are poised to make more efficient deliveries, crop surveillance and even disaster relief efforts. Taxis may soon take to the skies as well. And self-driving cars are ever closer to reality.

As we release our latest edition of NASA Spinoff, our yearly publication that celebrates the many ways our technology helps people on Earth, let’s take a closer look at some ways we’re helping augment transportation — and keeping everyone on the roads and in the skies safe.

1. Better data for driverless navigation

If cars are going to drive themselves, they need to be able to “see” and assess the world around them, from other cars to pedestrians and bicyclists to a construction cone in the road. This is accomplished with the help of 3D cameras, or light detection and ranging (lidar), which sends out laser pulses and calculates where obstacles are by how long it takes that laser to bounce back.

But that, says engineer Farzin Amzajerdian at our Langley Research Center, is like building a 3D picture one pixel at a time. Instead, a new kind of lidar grabs a full array of pixels all at once. This “flash lidar” is faster and, because it has fewer moving parts, more reliable. It sailed through initial tests for possible use on a future Moon lander, and our partner has also sold the technology to a major car parts manufacturer, for autonomous cars. 

2. Opening the airspace for drones

Air traffic control has largely been a human operation so far, with people in control towers actively directing all 50,000 or so flights daily across the United States. But add in drones, and humans won’t be able to keep up: experts estimate there will soon be millions of aircraft in flight every day.

We’re helping automate and streamline flight control, working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and private companies to build the new technology needed to manage the anticipated challenges. Among other advances as a result, one company has built a platform used at airports, by air traffic controllers, and by drone operators around the world to more easily file flight plans, view the airspace, get clearance in restricted areas and more.

3. Software modeling for air taxis

It may sound like something from the Jetsons, but real people are imagining the technology needed to make flying taxis a thing. And they’re probably not going to look anything like the passenger planes that we’re used to.

But when you start with a totally new design, there are all sorts of variables, including how much it will weigh. When it comes to flying, weight is a critical factor. For one thing, a heavier craft needs more fuel, but more fuel makes it even heavier. And all that weight stresses the structure, which means reinforcing it (more weight again!). Do it wrong, and all these factors cycle endlessly until you have something too heavy to get off the ground.

New software, designed with our help, generates fast and accurate weight estimates of novel aircraft designs, helping engineers figure out what works and how to make it better. Among other customers? UberElevate, which is trying to take rideshares to the skies.

4. More nimble hand controls

We’ve even played a part in improving different kinds of joysticks, for everything from planes and video games, over the years. We had to because—especially in the early days of space travel—spacesuits were pretty unwieldy under the high g forces of launch and re-entry, so we needed to develop easy-to-use hand controls.

One former astronaut, Scott Parazynski, had acquired a wealth of experience training on and using NASA joysticks for jobs like maneuvering the International Space Station’s robotic arm. He realized similar technology could have even more of an impact on Earth. Parazynski, who is also a medical doctor, envisions improving robotic surgery with the new joystick he created; in the meantime, it’s already on the market for drones, making it easier than ever to use them to record aerial video, inspect a gas pipeline or even assess damage after a hurricane.

5. Helping farmers get the full picture

The “bird’s-eye view” is an expression for a reason: flying overhead provides a perspective you just can’t get with two feet planted on the ground. For the first time ever, we are going to get that bird’s eye view on Mars, and the same expertise that got us there is also giving farmers a new way to keep track of their crops.

The Mars Helicopter is poised to hitch a ride to the Red Planet with our latest rover, Perseverance, later this year. Designing it was a challenge: because there is so little air to provide lift on Mars, we needed something incredibly light (less than four pounds!) with large rotors that spin incredibly fast (nearly 3,000 times per minute).

We teamed up with a company we’ve worked with in the past on high-altitude, solar-powered, unmanned flyers. That company had something else in the works, using the same expertise: a drone equipped with two high-res cameras to capture images of crops as it flies overhead. The data from these images tells farmers where plants are thriving and where they’re not, informing them where they might need more (or less) water or fertilizer.

You can learn more about all these innovations, and dozens more, in the 2020 edition of NASA Spinoff. Read it online or request a limited quantity print copy and we’ll mail it to you!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

[ds4design]

[News] Airbus is about to build a self-flying electric robo-taxi

If you think self-driving cars are futuristic, imagine them flying overhead. That's what European aerospace titan Airbus has done in designing its Vahana electric, autonomous plane, which can fly a single passenger on trips of around 50 miles, getting there about twice as fast as by car.

Airbus teased two possibilities for the Vahana on December 14: an electric helicopter and a plane with wings that tilt up to enable vertical take off and landing, or VTOL. After its engineers ran the numbers on both types, Airbus today announced that it's building a prototype of the sci-fi looking tilt-wing plane, which will begin test flights before the end of the year. "The vehicle is being built. Parts are being made as we speak," says Airbus chief engineer Geoffrey Bower.

The Vahana's wings tilt up for takeoff and landing.

Don't spend too much time fantasizing about your first ride in such an aircraft just yet, though. The company's goal is to get air taxis in service in about 10 years, possibly partnering with ride-hailing companies like Uber. "We would love to see what that kind of partnership might evolve into," says Maryanna Saenko of Airbus Ventures.

"The Airbus Vahana concept is a very good approach. It's going to work."

The Vahana (named for the creatures that Hindu gods ride upon) looks far different from other small planes because it has to fly straight up and down to fit tight urban landscapes without runways. It achieves that with two sets of wings—one sprouting from the craft's nose and one from the tail—which tilt up about 90 degrees to a vertical position. The wings carry eight propellers in total, making the Vahana look like a forest of helicopters on ascent and descent. The wings rotate level for flight, providing the extra lift that lets the plane travel more than twice as far as the competing helicopter design Airbus was considering. (The Vahana will also have a parachute to bring the whole plane down gently in case of an emergency.)

"The Airbus Vahana concept is a very good approach. It's going to work," says Mark Moore, who heads NASA's research on new plane technology, including electric propulsion, autonomous control, and personal craft. NASA consults with Airbus and other companies developing next-gen planes and equipment for them.

The tilt-wing design was always a favorite, says Bower, but it's a new idea competing with the tried-and-true helicopter concept. "As we were doing initial [planning] of our vehicle, the question kept coming back, can a helicopter do this?" he explains. Based on Airbus's engineering study, the chopper literally can't go the distance. For flights beyond 70 kilometers (a little over 40 miles), the tilt-wing plane is cheaper to run. More important, the plane can travel more than twice as far as the helicopter, for the same weight and battery power.

The Vahana flies like a plane, with wings and propellers facing forward, for most of its time in the air.

That's no surprise to Moore. Designwise, the Vahana is "almost exactly the same"—although much larger than—a VTOL drone called the GL-10 that NASA tested a couple of years ago. (GL stands for "greased lighting.") NASA recently began a new program, the X-57 Maxwell, to build a full-size electric commuter plane. It's retrofitting a gasoline-powered Tecnam P2006T twin-engine light aircraft, replacing just the wings and motors, to show the benefits of electric over gas.

Distributing a bunch of rotors that blow air across the wing produces more lift, especially at lower speeds (handy for pinpoint landings in cities) and thus allows smaller wings, which are more efficient at high speed. "The goal for us is a five times reduction in energy used at high-speed cruise condition," says Moore of NASA's test craft.

A 360-degree drone's-eye view from the GL-10. The video process distorts the appearance of the rotors.

Based on the same concept as NASA's planes, the Vahana should also save a lot of power. Electricity is key to that performance boost. "Internal combustion engines or turbines have heavy [drive] shafts that take power out to rotors that are distributed far away," says Bower. That's even more challenging for rotors or wings that pivot for vertical flight. Spacing electric motors around the aircraft—known as distributed electric propulsion—just requires running wires to them. It also helps that electric motors are two to three times more efficient than internal combustion engines, says Bower.

Electric commuter planes, even autopiloted ones, aren't a new concept. I first met NASA's Moore in 2008 at the Electric Aircraft Symposium, a small gathering of true believers—including Google cofounder Larry Page—at a hotel near the San Francisco International Airport. Experimental craft have been built over the intervening years, and the industry gained popularity with NASA's 2011 Green Flight Challenge to demonstrate the most energy-efficient aircraft. Google co-sponsored the event, which was organized by the CAFE (Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency) Foundation. In the meantime both battery and AI technology have steadily improved.

The biggest barrier for craft like the Vahana isn't the plane itself, but the infrastructure around it.

"There has not been any quantum leap," in battery technology, says CAFE Foundation executive director Yolanka Wulff. However, "[Batteries] have been steadily improving, and they are significantly better than they were in, say, 2008," she adds. Today's lithium-polymer batteries can hold a hefty 200 watt-hours per kilogram, and Moore thinks it could go as high as 350 in five years. "That's perfectly conditioned in order to be doing these shorter range, urban, VTOL missions," he says.

Even more important, according to Moore, has been the advances in battery charging that will allow a quick turnaround between flights. He points to Tesla's Superchargers, which can replenish its car batteries to 80% charge in about 30 minutes. "It's quite possible that in the next five to six years, that you're going to see a 60 to 80 percent charge take place in two to three minutes," says Moore.

The Vahana is meant to carry a single passenger on short, inexpensive flights when time is too tight to drive.

Advances in autonomous cars show that a self-piloted plane is also a possibility, and it's perhaps less of a stretch. "We've had autopilot for a long time," says Maryanna Saenko. "There are fewer obstacles. You don't have children running into streets." A lot more work has gone into managing overall traffic for planes than for cars, she says. Wulff is more circumspect. "I think the technology for a true autonomous plane carrying passengers—I think five years is a bit short," she says. (Airbus won't name the companies it's working with to provide the AI for autonomous control.)

The biggest barrier for craft like the Vahana isn't the plane itself, but the infrastructure around it, says Wulff. It requires building landing pads throughout urban environments, which may be a hard sell for the people who'd live near them. Without enough places to land, there wont be the economies of scale to take these flights beyond services for the elites. Costs need to get to something on the order of $40 for a 15-minute flight, she says. And although the regulatory process has started, it will be a long haul.

That helps explain why even though Airbus is building the Vahana prototype right now, it doesn't expect it to lead to a full-blown commercial business for years. "I think to have the aircraft within five years is certainly possible," says Wulff. "To have a functioning urban air mobility system in five years, I think that's too soon. I think 10 years is a more likely window."

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3 min readPreparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) An Alta-8 small Unmanned Aircraft System testbed vehicle flies above NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Flying beyond visual line of sight from observers on the ground required special approval from the Federal Aviation Administration and NASA.NASA / Bowman Researchers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia recently flew multiple drones beyond visual line of sight with no visual observer. The drones successfully flew around obstacles and each other during takeoff, along a planned route, and upon landing, all autonomously without a pilot controlling the flight. This test marks an important step towards advancing self-flying capabilities for air taxis. “Flying the vehicles beyond visual line of sight, where neither the vehicle nor the airspace is monitored using direct human observation, demonstrates years of research into automation and safety systems, and required specific approval from the Federal Aviation Administration and NASA to complete,” said Lou Glaab, branch head for the aeronautics systems engineering branch at NASA Langley. It is safer and more cost effective to test self-flying technology meant for larger, passenger carrying air taxis on smaller drones to observe how they avoid each other and other obstacles. NASA also is testing elements of automation technology using helicopters. These stand-in aircraft help NASA mature the autonomy well before self-flying air taxis are integrated into the skies. “When you have multiple vehicles, all coming and going from a vertiport that is located adjacent to an airport or deep within a community, we have to ensure the automation technologies of these vehicles are capable of safely handling a high volume of air traffic in a busy area,” said Glaab. Building upon past tests, the team successfully performed multiple flights using purchased ALTA 8 Uncrewed Aircraft Systems, also known as drones, with no visual observer and flew the drones beyond visual line of sight, referred to as “NOVO-BVLOS” flights. The software loaded onto the small drones performed airspace communications, flight path management, avoidance with other vehicles, and more skills needed to operate in a busy airspace. This is imperative for what is envisioned with Advanced Air Mobility (AAM), where drones and air taxis will be operating at the same time on a routine basis. The flight tests were observed from NASA Langley’s Remote Operations for Autonomous Missions control center while the drones took off and landed at the City Environment for Testing Autonomous Integrated Navigation test range. NASA researchers monitor the flight of an autonomous vehicle from the Remote Operations for Autonomous Missions UAS Operations Center at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. the center facilitates “beyond visual line of sight” flight operations of small uncrewed aircraft system vehicles, also known as drones.NASA / David Bowman NASA will transfer the new technology created during this project to the public to ensure industry manufacturers can access the software while designing their vehicles. “NASA’s ability to transfer these technologies will significantly benefit the industry,” said Jake Schaefer, flight operations lead for the project. “By conducting flight tests within the national airspace, in close proximity to airports and an urban environment, we are table to test technologies and procedures in a controlled but relevant environment for future AAM vehicles.” One of these technologies was ICAROURS, which stands for NASA’s Integrated Configurable Architecture for Reliable Operations of Unmanned Systems. This software provides an autonomous detect-and-avoid function and is part of the overall system to maintain “well clear” from other air traffic. Another technology used was NASA’s Safe2Ditch system, which allows the vehicle to observe the ground below and make an autonomous decision on the safest place to land in the event of an in-flight emergency. NASA’s AAM mission has multiple projects contributing to various research areas. This project, called the High Density Vertiplex, was specifically focused on testing and evaluating where these future vehicles will take off and land at high frequency, called vertiports, or vertiplexes, for multiple vertiports near each other, and the technology advancements needed to make this successful. Facebook logo @NASA@NASAaero@NASA_es @NASA@NASAaero@NASA_es Instagram logo @NASA@NASAaero@NASA_es Linkedin logo @NASA Explore More 3 min read NASA, Joby Pave the Way for Air Taxis in Busy Airports Article 1 day ago 2 min read NASA to Co-Host Stability and Control Prediction Workshop Article 2 days ago 4 min read Armstrong Flight Research Center: A Year in Review Article 1 week ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Aeronautics Science Missions Artemis Explore NASA’s History Share Details Last Updated Dec 21, 2023 EditorJim BankeContactDavid Meadedavidlee.t.meade@nasa.govLocationLangley Research Center Related TermsAeronauticsAdvanced Air MobilityAeronautics Research Mission DirectorateDrones & YouLangley Research Center