TVF Public Services Working Group

Recordings:
Downloads:

Published White Paper: NASA Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) Aircraft Technology for Public Services 

Task Statement:

The TVF Roadmap “Public Services Working Group” is tasked with defining activities in appropriate timeframes that would lead to the creation of a national capability for TVF-enabled search and rescue, law enforcement, medical transport, emergency/humanitarian response, and military operations. These activities need to be defined, sequenced, integrated and explained with sufficient clarity to make a compelling case for pursuing this capability. 

Working Groups (WGs) will document their recommendations by proposing updates to the current version of the TVF Roadmap Activity Name Spreadsheet (TRANS) for the “Public Services” Mission Element. As each activity is updated the WG will develop Activity Textual Descriptions (ATDs) that expand on the limited information provided by activity names displayed on the TRANS. The Working Group Leaders (WGL) will be expected to participate in monthly virtual meetings with their WGL counterparts to review and concur on accepting proposed updates. Accepted updates forwarded to NASA Aeronautics will be incorporated into the TVF Roadmap to generate a new reference version. Current and legacy versions of the Roadmap are available here.

Examination of the prepopulated activities on the TRANS will show that most of the activities appear to be duplicated in different Roadmap Mission Elements (highlighted in blue text). This is primarily due to the sparse information available in an activity’s descriptive name. In many cases, the work required to complete activities with the same name will be different depending on the mission application.  For example, takeoff and landing autonomous systems for air taxis versus regional commuter aircraft will likely have different implementations and be developed in different timeframes. There will be other cases where required technology or regulations are the same for multiple missions, and the duplication reflects a need for coordination across the WGs. An important part of a WG’s task is to discriminate between these two cases and handle the activity appropriately.

As a guide to help the WGs initially focus their efforts, a matrix of the perceived relevance of each subtopic to the mission elements has been provided. While most subtopics have a high correlation to the mission elements, some do not. It will be the WGs’ responsibility to update this matrix if they discover stronger, or weaker, correlations than currently indicated.

Interested in joining a working group? Contact:
Working Group Leader, Andrew Mearns: andy@multicopter.aero


Return to the Transformative Vertical Flight Roadmap Working Groups Homepage.