NASA shares flying taxi test data to help turn vision into reality

The skies above and between our cities could one day buzz with the sound of flying taxis, if developers around the world have their way. But turning that vision into reality requires huge amounts of data, which is not always readily available.

NASA aims to change that with ongoing tests of an eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) aircraft, which resembles a scaled-down air taxi that aircraft manufacturers could use for their own designs.

The tests, at the Langley Research Centre in Hampton, Virginia, are designed to provide engineers with real-world data on air taxi designs, improving understanding of flight dynamics and helping them design better flight control systems. These systems help stabilise and guide the motion of an aircraft while in flight, making sure it flies safely in varied conditions.

Most flying taxi companies keep their performance data private, so NASA is using its small aircraft to produce public, non-proprietary data available to all.

“NASA’s ability to perform high-risk flight research for increasingly automated and autonomous aircraft is really important,” said Siena Whiteside, who leads the Research Aircraft for eVTOL Enabling techNologies (Raven) project. “As we investigate these types of vehicles, we need to be able push the aircraft to its limits and understand what happens when an unforeseen event occurs.”

This could include a motor cutting out, for example. “NASA is willing to take that risk and publish the data so that everyone can benefit from it.”

Raven’s Subscale Wind Tunnel and Flight Test (Swft) aircraft weighs 17kg and has a wingspan of 1.83 metres. It has 24 control effectors, each of which can move during flight to change the vehicle’s motion.

NASA developed its custom flight controls using tools from Massachusetts software company MathWorks, allowing the researchers to reduce development timescales.

The Swft could act as a stepping stone to support development of a much larger 454kg aircraft, which would resemble a real flying taxi. That aircraft is being designed in collaboration with the Georgia Institute of Technology. It would also serve as an acoustical research tool, helping engineers understand the noise flying taxis might create.

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