Personal air vehicle
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)
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.
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.
Some private companies are using their own criteria for vehicles in this general category.
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.
...
Wikipedia