Shoshana Mayden

email address: smayden@ag.arizona.edu

The Arizona Daily Star
November 5, 1992

Engineer developing an easy-to-fly car    

You've planned the perfect family vacation at Disneyland for the weekend, but you dread the travel time.

Your choices are limited: A grueling eight-hour drive with the kids fighting in the back seat, or the expense and hassle of an airport and rental car. Either way you lose.

But what if you could simply transform your car into an airplane and pilot the trip yourself? It sounds like science fiction, but that's exactly what one UA engineer is working toward.

Steven Crow, an aerospace and mechanical engineering professor at the University of Arizona, is designing what he calls Starcar, a vehicle that could convert from an automobile to a personal airplane.

The vehicle will fuse the convenience of cars with the greater efficiency of air travel, Crow said.

The concept of a flying car is not novel. Various prototypes have been successfully built since the Curtiss Autoplane was exhibited in New York in 1917.

But these prototypes never gained popularity, in part because they were just as difficult to pilot as a conventional airplane. Crow said the Starcar will eliminate the need for expert flying skills.

The technology behind Starcar's navigation is the Global Positioning System (GPS), a group of satellites that can pinpoint the position of a vehicle anywhere on Earth with an accuracy of 100 meters. The satellites establish an electromagnetic coordinate system and transmit the position and velocity of a vehicle equipped with a GPS receiver, Crow said.

The system is part of a $10 billion Defense Department program that will include 24 satellites by 1993, Crow said. The handheld receivers are available to civilians for about $1,000.

Crow has been working on the Starcar since he joined the UA in 1989 and has already spent about $25,000 of his own money on the project. He estimates that it will cost $200,000 to complete the prototype within five years, with the funds coming from the private sector.

Crow envisions a Starcar selling for less than $50,000.

Last December, he demonstrated that Global Positioning could be used to control an automobile when a 1991 Dodge Caravan was navigated around a 400-meter track at Pima Community College.

Crow and Frank Manning, a UA software engineer, developed the computer software that interpreted the satellite signal. Jeff Carlton, a UA engineering senior, designed steering robotics that were controlled by GPS.

By using two GPS receivers, one on the vehicle and one at a base station, they achieved an accuracy of half a meter, Crow said. He is confident that the accuracy can improved to that required for precision landing.

Starcar has three interchangeable modules. The passenger module contains the rear end of the vehicle and the interior. The retractable rear wheels are used for driving and also serve as landing gear, Crow said.

The road module operates much like the front end of a car and allows the vehicle road access. Starcar would be at least five times more fuel efficient than an automobile, Crow said.

The road module "unplugs" from the passenger compartment, which, when mounted with the section containing wings and a propeller, enables the vehicle to take off for the skies.

After the prototype is built, the sky module will most likely be issued as a kit. The idea is that you'd buy the automobile portion of the Starcar, then build the flight module yourself.

However, Crow believes there will someday be a "full-fledged manufacturing phase" and a skyway system to regulate Starcar's use.

Skyways would be similar to freeways. They would include "on and off ramps" where the Starcar would take off and land.

At these ramps there would be transformer stations where the conversion from car to plane would take place. The station would resemble an automatic car wash, using robots to exchange the road and sky modules in a few seconds, Crow said.

Flight modules would be owned by the skyway system and rented to vehicle owners.

The skyway system would be designed to make flying the Starcar as easy as driving on the freeway. Although the Starcar could fly without human intervention, most people prefer to have some control, Crow said.

Drivers would view a computer screen which would show the boundaries of the skyway. The driver would be able to maneuver the vehicle within the skyway, but the GPS control would keep it from moving out of the boundaries or colliding with another vehicle.

In the 21st century Crow envisions the Starcar becoming a world industry, with 100,000 vehicles produced in the United States each year.

But in order for Crow's vision to become reality, problems such as liability and certification will have to be overcome, said Bruce Holmes, assistant director for aeronautics at NASA's Langley Research Center.

"It's not just as simple as putting a computer in a cockpit and saying, `Hey guys, go to it,' " Holmes said.

However, he believes that the Starcar or some other simple-to-fly aircraft will become a reality for the 21st century.

"My sense of things is that this is going to happen." Holmes said.