Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “package delivery”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 37 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1992

Hermes CX-7: Air transport system design simulation

The Hermes CX-7 has been designed to service the overnight parcel package delivery needs of the cities of Aeroworld as determined in the G-Dome Enterprises market survey. The design optimization centers on the prime goal of servicing the needs of these cities as efficiently and profitably as possible. The greatest factors which affect the design of an aircraft for the mission outlined in the Request for Proposal are cost, construction feasibility and effectiveness of the design. Other influencing factors are given by the constraints of the market, including a maximum takeoff and landing distance of 60 feet, storage capability in a container of size 5 ft. x 3 ft. x 2 ft., cargo packages of 2 inch and 4 inch cubes, and ability to turn with a radius no larger than 60 feet. Safety considerations such as flying at or below Mach one (30 ft/s) and controllability and maintainability of the aircraft must also be designed into the aircraft. Another influential factor is the efficiency of the aircraft which involves optimizations and tradeoffs of such factors as weight, lifting surface sizing, structural redundancy, and material costs.

Amer, Brian↗
NASA NTRS1992

Exodus: Prime Mover

The Exodus Prime Mover is an overnight package delivery aircraft designed to serve the Northern Hemisphere of Aeroworld. The preliminary design goals originated from the desire to produce a large profit. The two main driving forces throughout the design process were first to reduce the construction man-hours by simplifying the aircraft design, thereby decreasing the total production cost of the aircraft. The second influential factor affecting the design was minimizing the fuel cost during cruise. The lowest fuel consumption occurs at a cruise velocity of 30 ft/s. Overall, it was necessary to balance the economic benefits with the performance characteristics in order to create a profitable product that meets all specified requirements and objectives.

Bauer, Nikkol↗
NASA NTRS1992

Arrow 227: Air transport system design simulation

The Arrow 227 is a student-designed commercial transport for use in a overnight package delivery network. The major goal of the concept was to provide the delivery service with the greatest potential return on investment. The design objectives of the Arrow 227 were based on three parameters; production cost, payload weight, and aerodynamic efficiency. Low production cost helps to reduce initial investment. Increased payload weight allows for a decrease in flight cycles and, therefore, less fuel consumption than an aircraft carrying less payload weight and requiring more flight cycles. In addition, fewer flight cycles will allow a fleet to last longer. Finally, increased aerodynamic efficiency in the form of high L/D will decrease fuel consumption.

Bontempi, Michael↗
NASA NTRS1992

The S.T.o.R.M. (tm): Air transport system design simulation

The members of Team Asylum have proposed a helicopter design concept, called the S.T.o.R.M., in order to meet the market demands for an aircraft to perform overnight package delivery services in Aeroworld. The helicopter concept was chosen over a fixed wing aircraft design to fulfill the mission requirements for a variety of reasons, all of which will be discussed later. However, many critical design areas needed to be investigated as part of the helicopter concept's selection. One of the most significant design factors was the weight of the aircraft. This determined the selection of the propulsion system necessary to get the S.T.o.R.M. off the ground, and maintain flight once airborne. Another significant factor that went hand in hand with the motor selection was the choice of the main rotor. Since the main rotor is the primary source of lift for the helicopter, its proper selection became increasingly important.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1998

Launch Vehicle Assessment for Space Solar Power

A recently completed study at Georgia Tech examined various launch vehicle options for deploying a future constellation of Space Solar Power satellites of the Suntower configuration. One of the motivations of the study was to determine whether the aggressive $400/kg launch price goal established for SSP package delivery would result in an attractive economic scenario for a future RLV developer. That is, would the potential revenue and traffic to be derived from a large scale SSP project be enough of an economic "carrot" to attract an RLV company into developing a new, low cost launch vehicle to address this market. Preliminary results presented in the attached charts show that there is enough economic reward for RLV developers, specifically in the case of the latest large GEO-based Suntower constellations (over 15,500 MT per year delivery for 30 years). For that SSP model, internal rates of return for the 30 year economic scenario exceed 22%. However, up-front government assistance to the RLV developer in terms of ground facilities, operations technologies, guaranteed low-interest rate loans, and partial offsets of some vehicle development expenses is necessary to achieve these positive results. This white paper is meant to serve as a companion to the data supplied in the accompanying charts. It's purpose is to provide more detail on the vehicles and design processes used, to highlight key decisions and issues, and to emphasize key results from each phase of the Georgia Tech study.

Olds, John R.↗
NASA NTRS2000

Thiokol Solid Rocket Motors

This paper presents viewgraphs on thiokol solid rocket motors. The topics include: 1) Communications; 2) Military and government intelligence; 3) Positioning satellites; 4) Remote sensing; 5) Space burial; 6) Science; 7) Space manufacturing; 8) Advertising; 9) Space rescue space debris management; 10) Space tourism; 11) Space settlements; 12) Hazardous waste disposal; 13) Extraterrestrial resources; 14) Fast package delivery; and 15) Space utilities.

Graves, S. R.↗
NASA NTRS2015

Operator Informational Needs for Multiple Autonomous Small Vehicles

With the anticipated explosion of small unmanned aerial vehicles, it is highly likely that operators will be controlling fleets of autonomous vehicles. To fulfill the promise of autonomy, vehicle operators will not be concerned with manual control of the vehicle; instead, they will deal with the overall mission. Furthermore, the one operator to many vehicles is becoming a constant meme with various industries including package delivery, search and rescue, and utility companies. In order for an operator to concurrently control several vehicles, his station must look and behave very differently than the current ground control station instantiations. Furthermore, the vehicle will have to be much more autonomous, especially during non-normal operations, in order to accommodate the knowledge deficit or the information overload of the operator in charge of several vehicles. The expected usage increase of small drones requires presenting the operational information generated by a fleet of heterogeneous autonomous agents to an operator. NASA Langley Research Center's Autonomy Incubator has brought together researchers in various disciplines including controls, trajectory planning, systems engineering, and human factors to develop an integrated system to study autonomy issues. The initial human factors effort is focusing on mission displays that would give an operator the overall status of all autonomous agents involved in the current mission. This paper will discuss the specifics of the mission displays for operators controlling several vehicles.

Trujillo, Anna C.↗
NASA NTRS2016

Measured Noise from Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Proposed uses of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), including home package delivery, have the potential to expose large portions of communities to a new noise source. This paper discusses results of flyover noise measurements of four small UAVs, including an internal combustion-powered model airplane and three battery-powered multicopters. Basic noise characteristics of these vehicles are discussed, including spectral properties and sound level metrics such as sound pressure level, effective perceived noise level, and sound exposure level. The size and aerodynamic characteristics of the multicopters in particular make their flight path susceptible to atmospheric disturbances such as wind gusts. These gusts, coupled with a flight control system that varies rotor speed to maintain vehicle stability, create an unsteady acoustic signature. The spectral variations resulting from this unsteadiness are explored, in both hover and flyover conditions for the multicopters. The time varying noise, which differs from the relatively steady noise generated by large transport aircraft, may complicate the prediction of human annoyance using conventional sound level metrics.

Cabell, Randolph↗
NASA NTRS2016

Toward Reduced Aircraft Community Noise Impact Via a Perception-Influenced Design Approach

This is an exciting time for aircraft design. New configurations, including small multi-rotor uncrewed aerial systems, fixed- and tilt-wing distributed electric propulsion aircraft, high-speed rotorcraft, hybrid-electric commercial transports, and low-boom supersonic transports, are being made possible through a host of propulsion and airframe technology developments. The resulting noise signatures may be radically different, both spectrally and temporally, than those of the current fleet. Noise certification metrics currently used in aircraft design do not necessarily reflect these characteristics and therefore may not correlate well with human response. Further, as operations and missions become less airport-centric, e.g., those associated with on-demand mobility or package delivery, vehicles may operate in closer proximity to the population than ever before. Fortunately, a new set of tools are available for assessing human perception during the design process in order to affect the final design in a positive manner. The tool chain utilizes system noise prediction methods coupled with auralization and psychoacoustic testing, making possible the inclusion of human response to noise, along with performance criteria and certification requirements, into the aircraft design process. Several case studies are considered to illustrate how this approach could be used to influence the design of future aircraft.

Rizzi, Stephen A.↗
NASA NTRS2017

Real-Time Risk Assessment Framework for Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM)

The new Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Small Unmanned Aircraft rule (Part 107) marks the first national regulations for commercial operation of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) under 55 pounds within the National Airspace System (NAS). Although sUAS flights may not be performed beyond visual line-of-sight or over non- participant structures and people, safety of sUAS operations must still be maintained and tracked at all times. Moreover, future safety-critical operation of sUAS (e.g., for package delivery) are already being conceived and tested. NASA's Unmanned Aircraft System Trac Management (UTM) concept aims to facilitate the safe use of low-altitude airspace for sUAS operations. This paper introduces the UTM Risk Assessment Framework (URAF) which was developed to provide real-time safety evaluation and tracking capability within the UTM concept. The URAF uses Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs) to propagate off -nominal condition probabilities based on real-time component failure indicators. This information is then used to assess the risk to people on the ground by calculating the potential impact area and the effects of the impact. The visual representation of the expected area of impact and the nominal risk level can assist operators and controllers with dynamic trajectory planning and execution. The URAF was applied to a case study to illustrate the concept.

Ancel, Ersin↗
NASA NTRS2018

A Summary of the NASA Design Environment for Novel Vertical Lift Vehicles (DELIVER) Project

The number of new markets and use cases being developed for vertical take-off and landing vehicles continues to explode, including the highly publicized urban air taxi and package deliver applications. There is an equally exploding variety of novel vehicle configurations and sizes that are being proposed to fill these new market applications. The challenge for vehicle designers is that there is currently no easy and consistent way to go from a compelling mission or use case to a vehicle that is best configured and sized for the particular mission. This is because the availability of accurate and validated conceptual design tools for these novel types and sizes of vehicles have not kept pace with the new markets and vehicles themselves. The Design Environment for Novel Vertical Lift Vehicles (DELIVER) project was formulated to address this vehicle design challenge by demonstrating the use of current conceptual design tools, that have been used for decades to design and size conventional rotorcraft, applied to these novel vehicle types, configurations and sizes. In addition to demonstrating the applicability of current design and sizing tools to novel vehicle configurations and sizes, DELIVER also demonstrated the addition of key transformational technologies of noise, autonomy, and hybrid-electric and all-electric propulsion into the vehicle conceptual design process. Noise is key for community acceptance, autonomy and the need to operate autonomously are key for efficient, reliable and safe operations, and electrification of the propulsion system is a key enabler for these new vehicle types and sizes. This paper provides a summary of the DELIVER project and shows the applicability of current conceptual design and sizing tools novel vehicle configurations and sizes that are being proposed for urban air taxi and package delivery type applications.

Design Environment↗
NASA NTRS2018

Small Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Flight Testing of Enabling Vehicle Technologies for the UAS Traffic Management Project

Small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) have been studied and results indicate that there is a large array of highly-beneficial applications. These applications are too numerous to list, but include search and rescue, fire spotting, precision agriculture, etc. to name a few. Typically sUAS vehicles weigh less than 55 pounds and will be performing flight operations in the presence of manned aircraft and other sUAS. Certain sUAS applications, such as package delivery, will include operations in the close proximity of the general public. The full benefit from sUAS is contingent upon the resolution of several technological areas to enable free and widespread use of these vehicles. Technological areas in question include, but are not limited to: autonomous sense and avoid and deconfliction of sUAS from other sUAS and manned aircraft, communications and interfaces between the vehicle and human operators, and high-reliability autonomous systems. The NASA UAS Traffic Management (UTM) project is endeavoring to develop a traffic management system and concept of operations for these types of vehicles. An extensive sUAS flight test effort was performed to partially address vehicle-related technological areas and to shape an understanding of future developmental and test efforts for vehicles intended to use the UTM traffic management system. The flight testing described herein had the following objectives: 1) Install and test Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) systems developed for the automotive industry for potential sense and avoid sUAS applications; 2) Evaluate the use of cellular 4G systems to provide vehicle control; 3) Obtain high-resolution video imagery in support of image-based optical detection sense and avoid systems; 4) Acquire data in fixed-wing flight to support validation and maturation of an autonomous range containment system known as Safeguard in fixed-wing flight. A total of 53 flights were performed over 12 operational days at Beaver Dam Airpark in Elberon, VA. This work was sponsored by the UTM project that is part of the Aviation Operations and Safety Program (AOSP) at NASA.

Glaab, Louis J.↗
NASA NTRS2018

Autonomous Coordinated Airspace Services for Terminal and Enroute Operations with Wind Errors

As novel uses of the airspace continue to multiply, there is increasing demand for access to high-density terminal areas around major airports. Since the predicted demand for urban-air-mobility and urban-package-delivery is very high, and the interactions between these different types of aircraft and missions will be extremely complex, increasingly autonomous systems will be required to manage safety and efficiency. This paper presents the current status of an autonomous safety system designed to ensure safe and efficient trajectories for aircraft in terminal airspace, the Terminal Advanced Airspace Concept. Previous papers have demonstrated the efficacy of this algorithm for handling commercial arrivals into a complex metroplex when there is no uncertainty present. This study extends that work to demonstrate the performance of the algorithm under high levels of uncertainty.

terminal operations↗
NASA NTRS2018

Autonomous Coordinated Airspace Services for Terminal and Enroute Operations with Wind Errors

As novel uses of the airspace continue to multiply, there is increasing demand for access to high-density terminal areas around major airports. Since the predicted demand for urban-air-mobility and urban-package-delivery is very high, and the interactions between these different types of aircraft and missions will be extremely complex, increasingly autonomous systems will be required to manage safety and efficiency. This paper presents the current status of an autonomous safety system designed to ensure safe and efficient trajectories for aircraft in terminal airspace, the Terminal Advanced Airspace Concept. Previous papers have demonstrated the efficacy of this algorithm for handling commercial arrivals into a complex metroplex when there is no uncertainty present. This study extends that work to demonstrate the performance of the algorithm under high levels of uncertainty.

terminal operations↗
NASA NTRS2014

Intelligent UAS Sense-and-Avoid Utilizing Global Constraints

Sense-and-avoid (SAA) is a critical research topic for enabling the operation of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in civilian airspace. SAA involves two planning related problems: 1) plan-recognition to predict the future trajectory of nearby aircraft, and 2) path planning to avoid conflicts with nearby aircraft that pose a threat. We have designed and built components of a novel intelligent sense-and-avoid (iSAA) reasoning framework that takes into account information about aircraft type, transponder code, communications, local routes, airports, airspace, terrain, and weather to more accurately predict near- and medium-term trajectories of nearby aircraft. By using this additional information both the on-board control software and the ground-based UAS operator can make more informed, intelligent decisions to effectively predict and avoid conflicts and maintain separation. While this capability benefits all categories of UASs operating under both Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) and Visual Flight Rules (VFR), it is absolutely essential for allowing smaller UASs to operate VFR at low altitude in uncontrolled airspace for operations such as survey work, wildlife tracking, aerial photography, utilities inspection, crop dusting, and package delivery.

unmanned aircraft systems↗
NASA NTRS2018

Safe2Ditch Autonomous Crash Management System for Small Unmanned Aerial Systems: Concept Definition and Flight Test Results

Small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) have the potential for a large array of highly-beneficial applications. These applications are too numerous to comprehensively list, but include search and rescue, fire spotting, precision agriculture, etc. to name a few. Typically sUAS vehicles weigh less than 55 lbs and will be performing flight operations in the National Air Space (NAS). Certain sUAS applications, such as package delivery, will include operations in the close proximity of the general public. The full benefit from sUAS is contingent upon the resolution of several technological areas in order to provide an acceptable level of risk for widespread sUAS operations. Operations of sUAS vehicles pose risks to people and property on the ground as well as manned aviation. Several of the more significant sUAS technological areas include, but are not limited to: autonomous sense and avoid and deconfliction of sUAS from other sUAS and manned aircraft, communications and interfaces between the vehicle and human operators, and the overall reliability of the sUAS and constituent subsystems. While all of the technological areas listed contribute significantly to the safe execution of the sUAS flight operations, contingency or emergency systems can greatly contribute to sUAS risk mitigations to manage situations where the vehicle is in distress. The Safe2Ditch (S2D) system is an autonomous crash management system for sUAS. Its function is to enable sUAS to execute emergency landings and avoid injuring people on the ground, damaging property, and lastly preserving the sUAS and payload. A sUAS flight test effort was performed to test the integration of sub-elements of the S2D system with a representative sUAS multi-rotor.

Glaab, Louis J.↗