Background
Airports offer transportation services locally between internationals, between countries and between remote cities, depending on manned aircraft having relatively medium to large sizes, but between nearby cities, even inside large cities, there are no public aircraft available for personal use or for transportation and package delivery.
In recent years, a number of inventions have been filed for UAVs offering different services specifically for package pick-up and delivery, spending billions of dollars in the past decade for development related to UAVs, but as such, even though the prior art shows facilities and machines that support UAV tasks, such as international patent application No. WO/2017/106721 a1 entitled "multi-level distribution center for drones" filed by amazon scientific corporation, does not show a comprehensive airport for controlling and handling these operations and tasks and serving as an air force base or center for controlling all these UAVs and flying car transportation activities in each city in an organized manner, rather than randomly disseminating ideas and inventions for different companies how to manage UAV flight from company stores to customers. There is also a need for flying automobile airports, and in fact, road vehicles are the primary means of transportation, supporting all multitasking transportation and civil services using: passenger transport hatchbacks, sports cars, salons, four-wheel drive cars, pickup trucks, buses, ambulances, trucks, motorcycles, desert motorcycles, patrol cars, rovers, etc., but no hovercar has emerged.
In the air, the shape and drive mechanism of the aircraft are very different and vary in size, etc.
Even flying automobiles is a dream, and in the past decade some designs, ideas or models appear to provide flying automobiles, such as the airbus company providing VTOL flying automobiles, where a small car is transported from one parking lot to another in another city, a large Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is taking the car and setting it down, but does not show any mechanism for engaging or disengaging the car, nor of course provides safe and fully controlled landing and take-off services for the airbus airport in an organized manner.
An Air Reconfigurable Embedded System (ARES) is the concept of unmanned VTOL flight modules that can transport various payloads, initiated by DARPA as DARPA TX plan or to convert transformers to land-air dual-purpose aircraft, with 2013 DARPA plan review finding limited interest in flying car concepts, proposing a new model, a remotely controlled aircraft without a fuselage, with a top wing with two pivotable sideways ducted propellers for takeoff and cruise, and a carrier to be in between to carry cars (vehicles) or payloads in the free space of a traditional fuselage. However, the size of such vehicles is still large, i.e. 9.0m X13.0.0 m, not compact and does not provide a wing that can be stowed/deployed, even being short in height.
However, the prior art only shows the invention as to how to carry cars from one place to another, or how to provide cars that can be changed to airplanes and vice versa, but none discuss how a car with wings can land in a parking lot covered by trees, shades, or the like, or how a large body carrier like in an air bus or rockschid martin can descend to a position where its vehicles land on trees, shades, wires, or the like, obstruct its path and large size, nor how to handle large area landings and takeoffs of a large number of flying cars.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a basic unique set-up for airports retrofitted to a plurality of limited areas of a city, to handle particularly suitable modified embodiments of drones, passenger or logistic aircraft or carrier cars capable of performing in an organized manner the safe landing, parking, take-off for manned flying cars or containers containing courier cargo (packages).
Another object of the present invention is to raise human thinking to the limit in an exciting way to solve the problem of high road traffic in modern cities by providing and building urban airports that can be automatically operated by multi-deck hovercar parks, lifts, which land and take off autonomously, replacing road traffic with air traffic using a wide, open and unused lower air space, and automating the logistics from air container carriers as wholesale delivery to air receiving towers that are delivered to the retail industry as unmanned aerial vehicles at autonomous ground stations, while the airports themselves are dynamically managed and maintained by flying robots and UAVs that can provide similar services to areas near cities and equip the other side with passenger hovercar based on permanently installed wings or separate planes carrying passengers, or an air vehicle with supporting technical features, to perform the tasks of road vehicles, but by flying in a lower airspace, to make it of similar dimensions to a normal car or pick-up to support its easy entry into (landing) and exit from (taking off) a parking lot, generally adapted to a car, which can carry on its top surface aerodynamic bodies of any shape, including the cockpit, passenger seats, cargo holds, civil defense or police equipment, relaxation rooms, technician cages, ambulance rooms, visitors, packages with drones, exterior wall cleaning, rescue services, high-rise building maintenance, etc.
Detailed Description
Best mode for carrying out the invention:
to facilitate the practice of the invention, a detailed description of the various components of the invention supported by the accompanying drawings is provided herein, wherein the major components are arranged in order according to their importance for ease of reading by reference to each feature by a number contained in a component description text and in a component number list, where the numbers of the component features are indicated sequentially starting with the numeral 20, each time a component feature appears in the text, it will be directly assigned the applicable serial number. As an example in fig. 2, the features of the components are arranged in the order of numbers 20, 21, 22.
To date, inside a city or in addition to its center, there is no fully organized center as a ground base for controlling a variety of air traffic in all low-air spaces, nor is there an invention directed to airports (ground bases) with nearly comprehensive technical features to run flying cars and UAV operations in multiple aspects. In the future, it is expected that flying cars will be used inside cities or between cities, or between airports, or even between ports or distribution centers and between other delivery sites, with at least 100 million cars currently on the roads in each of several hundred cities, plus these expected high altitude traffic flows as UAV's that are the ultimate requirement for providing multiple services, which means that any percentage of these tens of thousands of flying cars or UAVs are crowded daily in the lower aerospace space of any large city where thousands of take-offs and landings will occur daily or thousands of take-offs and landings may occur hourly.
These problems should be handled organically by batch processing of hovercars (hovercars) and UAVs on airport land, the best method is to establish the following:
1-complete and unique urban autonomous airport (CAA)20 infrastructure for handling the landing and takeoff of flying cars and UAVs.
2-a (CAA)20 with a plurality of terminal buildings, for example: passenger terminal 21, logistics terminal 22, autonomous warehouse terminal 23, support service terminal 24.
3-use VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) aeronautical technologies to save take-off and landing areas.
4-multiple options services, such as: a-renting flights from a hovercar airport (20) to another, b-renting both flights between airports (20) (remote UAV (airplane) 25 modified to carry conventional modified minibus, where minibus 26 is to be used inside and behind a city (fig. 3), c-VIP renting full time hovercar (winged hovercar) with built-in retractable (foldable) wing empennage (bottom winged hovercar 27 or top winged hovercar 28) for flying between (CAA) airports 20, parking lots, and as electric cars traveling on city interior roads.
5-programmed path/trajectory using GPS system full control and management.
6-a multi-level apron 29 between a landing site 30 and a takeoff site 31, in which the aircraft can be serviced and charged.
7-online reservation and subscription.
8-free shopping areas, shopping centers, markets, online warehouse products may be added as an additional complement to the CAA 20, and the CAA 20 may be located between urban and industrial areas, which will become the most vigorous, most active, most autonomous and most intelligent urban hub handling trade and transportation, meaning that if hundreds of autonomous urban airports are established, tens of satellites need to be launched to control their operation and intelligent services.
Thus, to provide a City Autonomous Airport (CAA)20 that can autonomously handle reservation (booking) or UAV services for a selected hovercar for personal use or shipment (container) 32 according to a specific selected root and controlled path program managed by GPS, the airport (CAA)20 infrastructure according to fig. 1 should have the following four terminal buildings:
station building No. 1:
this terminal starts with a reception lobby 33 for passengers (personnel) or containers 32, wherein these lobbies are assigned to take-off yards (departures) 31, wherein cars 33 from the interior of the parking lot are automatically driven towards the departure point, or containers 31 are moved towards the departure point by means of e.g. an electric belt, or by means of driven trucks, both cars and containers being handled in a yard quay 30 within the terminal 1 (fig. 2 (a-F)).
After the passenger enters the converted mini-car 26 and is ready, order the VTOL UAV 25 with built-in ducted propellers, rotors, once approaching the car, should orient the UAV apron 29 of the multi-level floor in the takeoff field 31 (figure 2(C, D, F)) towards the position of the car, then via a set of laser transmitter and receiver sensors, adjust the VTOL UAV 25 to engage the top side of the car 26 (figure 3), pick up the car 26 from the protruding upper horizontal bar 34 by the gripping mechanism, or in another embodiment, the lower ducts 35 on both sides of the UAV 25 are driven horizontally towards two horizontal bars 35 projecting above the car, and then after engagement, preventing it from sliding out of the car 26 from the horizontal duct 35, the rear open side is hydraulically and automatically locked by two motorized vertical metal parts 36 and projects upwards out of the car roof (figure 4), the UAV 25 then transports the car 26 or container 32 to another airport 20 in another city. The same picking process applies to the container 32.
Once the UAV vehicle 25 arrives at another airport 20 (figure 2(A, B, C, F)), it lands on landing site 30 and departs from the vehicle 26, flies toward its multistorey car park 29 (figure 2-C), stows/tilts/swings each wing half vertically upward along its pivot axis to shorten its width to enter its parking space, charges it during waiting, technical checks or repairs to pick up another vehicle 26 (figure 2E) from the departure area (takeoff site 31), etc., according to conventional mechanisms. Normally, the arriving car 26 is driven to the arriving car park 37, leaving the passenger there, or driven off the arriving terminal building and away from the checkpoint for use as a rental car 26 in urban areas and back to the airport 20.
In another embodiment, the VTOL device may be a full-time car permanently engaged with the wings and tail for direct use as a VIP option, where the VTOL UAV carrier 25 would not be needed. In the bottom wing aircraft 27 embodiment, the side wings 38 and tail wings 39 are secured to the underside of the aircraft 25 below the side and rear doors (FIGS. 5(A-E)), therefore, when the flying-wing type automobile 27 is parked in the airport (CAA)20 or is personally driven on the road outside the airport (CAA)20, by tilting it vertically upward around the main body of the flying-wing type automobile 27, then, as in (fig. 5-E), the distal ends of the wings 38 are tilted horizontally inward above the roof of the hovercar 27, the side wings 38 and the rear wing 39 can be retracted (foldable), the folded state is not shown in full for clarity, and the configuration has been modified to be of a completely horizontal type, so that passengers may approach and remain undisturbed during take-off, flight and landing, while driving also with a stowable configuration, side and rear view obstruction problems are solved using side and rear view conventional cameras that are already available in the art and on the market.
In another embodiment, the wings 38 and tail fins 39 of the top wing flying car 28 are permanently mounted on the top sides of the side and rear doors (fig. 6(a-D)), the wings 38 and tail fins 39 are foldable, and the wing flying car 28 travels on roads in urban areas and unfolds into a horizontal configuration while in flight or while passengers are in and out.
The winged flying cars 27, 28 do not take off and land on the yard quay, but rather a specially designed elevator terminal 40 is provided within terminal building No. 1, where passengers do not need to enter the car 26 to be picked up by the VTOL UAV carrier 25 towards an open field, but they will enter the ground from the originating entrance of the flying car elevator terminal 40 (fig. 7(a-H)), the process flow inside the elevator terminal building is as follows:
the a-wing aircraft 27, 28 lands on a landing deck 41 above the lift terminal 40.
The b- wing aircraft 27, 28 moves downwardly towards the ground via a downward landing elevator 42 (fig. 7-G).
c-the arriving passenger leaves the lift station 40 with the wing- flyer 27, 28 to personally drive and use the flyer on the roads within the city, or leaves the wing- flyer 27, 28 in the center of the ground floor and exits from the arrival exit.
The d- wing aircraft 27, 28 is directed by the electric belts towards the inspection/charging centre in the ground floor.
The e-wing aircraft 27, 28 is moved by an electric belt towards a takeoff elevator 43.
f-departure passengers enter the wing aircraft 27, 28 under examination, and the hovercraft is carried upward by departure lift 43 toward the roof (takeoff) area 44 (fig. 7-H).
g-charging the flying wing 27, 28 during the movement from the lowering lift 42 towards the departure lift 43, wherein the solar panels can provide solar energy for charging the same.
h-between and adjacent to the descent elevator 42 and departure elevator 43, the multi-storey building 45 consists of a floor for arrival at the exit, departure of the wing hovercar, servicing of the wing hovercar, departure, while other storeys are occupied by restaurants, managers, etc.
Airport (CAA)20 station No. 1 is also equipped with a special hovercar 46 (fig. 8(A, B, C, D, E)) in which the body and interior trim and interior equipment (without wheels) of any common automobile brand having a smooth profile are built on hovercar vehicles 47 having four forward ducted propellers 48 with rear swinging swivel jets 49 to support vertical take-off and landing and foldable side wings 50 and four wheels 51 to support the drive thereof, these automatic automobiles 46 being available from the yard or lift of station No. 1.
It should be noted that the hovercar 26, 27, 47 needs to be retrofitted to provide all the necessary tools and accessories to ensure the safety and relaxation of the passengers, for example: containing water, snacks, drinks, a mask, a central console for SOS communication for emergency calls or emergency drops, and a dashboard having: entertainment tools, flight map details, and an underlying landscape display. The seat further provides: massage, adjustable and tilting mechanisms. On the backseat: a child safety seat. On the inner side of the roof: life jackets/rafts. A luggage room: and (6) storing the luggage. Since the expected weight of the entire flying car with two passengers and luggage is about 0.5 tons, it can be equipped with parachutes.
Number 2 terminal building
In order to handle the air cargo through a small landing area, terminal building No. 2 is built from a multi-storey building (fig. 9) as a logistics center for container parcel handling, where air containers 32 dropped down from VTOL UAV are received from one side by a bidirectional container lift 52, which distributes these containers to the appropriate floors, opens the containers in each floor and autonomously picks up parcels 53 by a drone 54, which will be scanned and which the drone distributes them on shelves 55 and later, according to the delivery plan of the appropriate conveyor belt to be distributed to the autonomous ground station 56, will scan again the bar codes (labels, tags), send messages to the recipient to update the tracking status of the relevant goods (parcels) 53 to the destination and the predicted delivery time, the autonomous ground station 56 can perform further processing, such as security scanning and short-time storage, a motorized conveyor in the autonomous ground station will move the package 53 to the other side of the station where it is picked up and transported by the drone 54 to a two-way package elevator 57 or package elevator 57 in a multi-elevator autonomous tower to feed the package directly, moving the package 53 up, where the drone will pick up the package on top of the package elevator and transport it to the customer location, or a group of packages 53 is fed to an air borne drone 58 similar to that shown in (figure 11(A, B, C)) equipped with a group of micro drones to assign the group of packages 53 to a particular building.
The elevators 52, 57 have two ways for returning empty containers or not receiving (returning) packages 53.
No. 3 terminal building
To handle the distribution of the air cargo through the extended landing area, the trucks may also enter the warehouse, station building No. 3 is configured as a wholesale retail distribution center (fig. 10) where trucks loaded with containers or air containers 32 dropped down from VTOL UAV 25 are received from one side by a bi-directional container lift 52 that distributes these containers 32 to the underlying electrical carousel, once the containers 32 are opened autonomously according to conventional mechanisms, the packages 53 are picked up autonomously by the drone, which will scan and distribute them to shelves 55, which then according to the delivery schedule will be sent to the appropriate carousel of the autonomous ground station 56, which will scan the bar codes (tags) again, send messages to the recipient to update their tracking status and expected delivery times with respect to the arrival of the cargo (packages), the autonomous ground station 56 may further perform e.g. security scanning and short-time storage, a motorized conveyor within the autonomous ground station would move the package 53 to the other side of the station where it is picked up by the drone and then picked up and delivered to be delivered to the customer site, or a group of packages 53 could be fed into an air borne drone 58 similar to that shown in (figure 11(A, B, C)) equipped with a group of micro drones to distribute the group of packages 53 to a particular building yard.
There are two ways in which the elevator can be used to return empty air containers.
Station 4:
as required, in addition to providing additional services to the residential areas within the city, a number 4 terminal will be conventionally constructed to provide support services to the entire autonomous airport 20.
Thus, terminal building No. 4 will become the operation center, providing the facility with machine and spare part requirements to maintain its autonomous operation, support its services, provide maintenance. These would include the following:
1-VTOL UAVS 25 and its spare parts (FIG. 3).
2- winged flying vehicles 27, 28 and their spare parts (fig. 5, 6).
3-air vehicle 47 with a converted conventional automobile 46 (fig. 8) built in.
4-leading drone 59 (fig. 12): these drones have a display screen (60) for guiding the passengers, drivers, etc. to the appropriate location by communicating with the passengers, drivers, etc. via microphone/telephone and displaying the specific information required on the screen, rather than having the passengers seek for employees or vice versa, thus guiding the drone is an autonomous service tool.
5-fire drone 61 (fig. 13): the fire fighting drone 61 carries a plurality of fire extinguishers 62 on its top surface. In case of fire, it does not take a long time to wait for the fire extinguishing vehicle to approach, but instead, the fire fighting drones 61 spread throughout the airport facilities are prepared to fly directly to the outdoor or indoor fire scene in a few seconds to cope with the situation in which one or more fire fighting drones can be sent to the fire scene.
Additional fire-fighting drones 61 can also be placed under civil defense needs near the city.
6-flying robotics 63 (FIG. 14): these technician robots 63 have foldable wings 64 and tail 65 to support their flight and rapid access to recently perform a number of tasks, such as: the screen 66 built into its chest side is used to guide passengers or, instead of the display 66, spare parts boxes are equipped to support their ability to perform certain part replacements of airport facilities or flying cars outside on urban roads, either within the autonomous airport 20 or in emergency situations, where any fingers of the flight technician robots 63 can be modified to perform data diagnostics by being able to connect to a data diagnostics connector to read the fault memory, learn the fault section to delete the fault memory after the problem is resolved.
7-flying spare parts box 67 (fig. 15): these boxes are equipped with foldable wings 65 and empennage 66 to support their flight and rapid approach to perform a number of tasks according to the robotic arm 68, which can be welding, drilling, etc., and large spare boxes 69, such as: the airport technician is provided with the required spare parts for a short time inside or outside the airport 20, or alternatively certain parts of the airport facilities or flying cars are replaced outside on urban roads, either inside the autonomous airport 20 or in an emergency situation, wherein any fingers of the robot arm 68 can be modified to perform data diagnostics by being able to connect to a data diagnostics connector to read the faulty memory, which is known to be deleted after the problem is resolved.
8-rescue drone 70 (fig. 16-A, B): the rescue drone is provided with a hook (clamp) 71 from its underside to pick up the dropped faulty drone ASAP as soon as possible and return to station 4.
9-facade cleaning drone 72 (fig. 17-A, B, C): these drones have a rotatable brush 73, a water supply hose, a drainage basin, to provide cleaning services to autonomous airport facilities or buildings near cities, as required.
10-charging drone 74 (fig. 18(A, B)): these drones have a battery 75 for on-site charging by plugging into the connector 76 of an intra-city hovercar in case of emergency, and can also provide charging for regular electric cars in the vicinity of the city, as required.
Industrial applicability:
1-City Autonomous Airport (CAA) buildings, tools, machines, electronic services and transportation methods where their construction, structure, autonomous means, GPS systems, path and root control, online booking, air traffic surveillance towers, electric conveyor belts, escalators, elevators, boarding points, rental car facilities, etc., except for foldable/retractable wings and empennages where UAVs can be engaged with cars, take off vertically, land, detached from cars, or permanently installed with built-in ducted propellers, all made with applicable modifications.
2-multiple use in civil unmanned transport; from city to city, from airport to (CAA), from seaport to (CAA), from industrial city warehouse to (CAA), from (CAA) to city, and thus may be used in commercial departments, government departments, hospitals, traffic control, and the like.
3-autonomous airports (CAA) and transportation modes are remodeling and rebuilding lower air space traffic to reduce congestion, be more organized, efficient, profitable, beneficial and bring less pollution and annoyance.
The 4-revolutionary solution replaces all of the proposed flying cars that require long take-off yards or large take-off and landing spaces or bulky mechanisms to fold the bulky wings into an unorganized shape.
5-autonomous airports (CAA) and their transportation methods will open up lower air spaces to solve the problem of high road congestion, especially between large cities.
6-remodel the entire current civilian trade, wholesale, retail and transportation into a more modern, wiser, smarter and more organized trade.
Indexing of part drawings:
20 City Autonomous Airport (CAA). 50 flank.
21 passenger terminal. 51 wheels.
22 logistics terminal building. 52 container lift.
23 from the main warehouse terminal. 53 air parcel.
24 support a service terminal. 54 pick up the drone.
25 modified automobile carrying airplane. 55 shelf.
26 modified minicar. 56 autonomous ground station
27 bottom wing flying car. 57 wrap the elevator.
28 top wing flying car. 58 air borne drones.
29 multi-deck apron. 59 guide the drone.
30 a landing field. 60 a display screen.
31 takeoff field. 61 fire control unmanned aerial vehicle.
32 air containers. 62 extinguisher.
33 to take over the lobby. 63 flying robot technician.
34 two upper horizontal bars. 64 the wing can be folded.
35 lower pipeline. 65 foldable tail.
36 vertical metal bracket (lock). 66 display a screen.
37 parking lot. 67 flight tool box.
38 flank the wing. 68 robot arm.
39 tail wing. 69 spare parts box.
40 elevator terminal. 70 rescue unmanned plane.
41 drop the top plate 41. 71 hook/clamp
The elevator is lowered 42. 72 facade cleaning unmanned plane.
43 from the elevator. 73 rotatable brushes.
44 roof takeoff area. 74 charging the drone.
45 multi-storey buildings. And 75, a battery.
46 hovercar 76 connector.
47 air vehicle. 77 built-in emergency micro unmanned aerial vehicle.
A 48-channel propeller.
49 swing type rotary spray pipe.
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