ABOUT METAL RAPTOR
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Metal Raptor was founded by Lee Priest in 2021 and is based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Mr Priest's 11 years of experience as a successful CEO, over 100 patent applications, Georgia Tech Engineering Degree (BIE) and Harvard Business School (MBA) training have enabled Metal Raptor to accumulate and build a powerful portfolio of assets. We have a vision of enabling people around the globe to fly from point to point in their own personal airborne vehicles and receive products via drone delivery.
Successfully directing air traffic for autonomous drones and flying cars requires a sophisticated topology designed to manage millions of takeoffs, landings and vectors everyday across hundreds of geographic regions. As drones and flying vehicles are added to the airspace, a new vision and management architecture for the future are required to avoid accidents and insure flight traffic is efficient and not impeded.
Our Vision for Autonomous Aircraft
Flying Lane Management
A flying lane for an airborne vehicle represents its path from takeoff to landing at a certain time. The objective of flying lane management is to prevent collisions, congestion, etc. with drones and cars in flight. A flying lane can be modeled as a vector which includes coordinates and altitude (i.e., x, y, and z coordinates) at a specified time. The flying lane also can include speed and heading such that the future location can be determined. The flying lane management systems utilize one or more wireless networks to manage flying vehicles in various applications. Note, flying lanes for delivery drones and flying cars have significant differences from conventional air traffic control flying lanes for aircraft (i.e., commercial airliners).
First, there will be orders of magnitude more vehicles in flight than aircraft. This creates a management and scale issue. Collision avoidance in delivery drones is about avoiding property damage in the air (deliveries and the drones) and on the ground; collision avoidance in flying cars and commercial aircraft is about safety.
Second, drones are flying at different altitudes, much closer to the ground, i.e., there may be many more ground-based obstructions. Third, drones do not have designated takeoff/landing zones, i.e., airports, causing the different flight phases to be intertwined more, again adding to more management complexity. It is fully expected that flying cars will have designated takeoff/landing zones and there will be millions of them spread throughout the country on parking decks, on top of buildings, in neighborhoods, etc. To address these differences, the flying lane management systems and methods provide an autonomous/semi-autonomous management system, using one or more wireless networks, to control and manage drones and flying cars in flight, in all phases of a flying plane and adaptable based on continuous feedback and ever-changing conditions. Additionally, the system integrates real-time weather information into flying lane management.
Managing Dynamic & Static Obstructions
Critically important for next generation Air Traffic Control (ATC) are the systems and methods for managing detected obstructions. These systems and methods provide a mechanism in the ATC System to characterize detected obstructions at or near the ground. In some cases, the detected obstructions are dynamic obstructions, i.e., moving at or near the ground. Examples of dynamic obstructions can include, other airborne vehicles, vehicles on the ground, cranes on the ground, etc. Generally, dynamic obstruction management includes managing other airborne vehicles at or near the ground and managing objects on the ground which are moving, which could either interfere with a landing or with low-flying UAVs. In some cases flying vehicles will be equipped to locally detect and identify dynamic obstructions for avoidance thereof and to notify the ATC system for management thereof.
If the detected obstructions are static obstructions, i.e., not moving, which can be temporary or permanent. The ATC system can implement a mechanism to accurately define the location of the detected obstructions, for example, a virtual rectangle, cylinder, etc. defined by location coordinates and altitude. The defined location can be managed and determined between the ATC system and the flying vehicles as well as communicated to the flying vehicles for flight avoidance. That is, the defined location can be a “no-fly” zone for the UAVs. Importantly, the defined location can be precise since it is expected there are a significant number of obstructions at or near the ground, and the UAVs need to coordinate their flight to avoid these obstructions. In this manner, the systems and methods seek to minimize the no-fly zones.
Through communication with flying vehicles over a wireless network, the air traffic control system receives continuous updates related to existing obstructions whether temporary or permanent, maintains a database of present obstructions, and updates the various flying vehicles with associated obstructions in their flight plan. The systems and methods can further direct flying vehicles to investigate, capture data, and provide such data for analysis to detect and identify obstructions for addition in the database. The systems and methods can make use of the vast data collection equipment on flying vehicles, such as cameras, radar, etc. to properly identify and classify obstructions.
Waypoints
Similar to terrestrial mapping systems, Flying Cars and Airborne Drones can be greatly assisted in their flight routing using waypoint directories - in the air. A waypoint is a reference point in physical space used for purposes of navigation in the air traffic control systems for Flying Cars and Airborne Drones. Waypoints can be defined based on the geography, e.g., different sizes for dense urban areas, suburban metro areas, and rural areas. The air traffic control system can maintain the status of each waypoint, e.g., clear, obstructed, or unknown. The status can be continually updated and managed with the Flying Cars and Airborne Drones and used for routing the same.
Monitoring Systems
Conventional FAA Air Traffic Control monitoring approaches are able to track and monitor all airplanes flying in the U.S. concurrently. Such approaches do not scale with additional and smaller flying vehicles, which can exceed airplanes in numbers by several orders of magnitude. Our systems and methods provide a hierarchical monitoring approach where zones or geographic regions of coverage are aggregated into a consolidated view for monitoring and control. The zones or geographic regions can provide local monitoring and control while the consolidated view can provide national monitoring and control in addition to local monitoring and control through a drill-down process. A consolidated and cloud based server can aggregate data from various sources of control for zones or geographic regions. From this consolidated server, monitoring and control can be performed for any flying vehicle communicatively coupled to a wireless network.
Leveraging Wireless Networks
The next generation air traffic control system will utilize existing wireless networks, such as 4G and 5G cell networks to provide air traffic control for Flying Vehicles and Delivery Drones. These cellular networks can be used in combination with other networks such as the NAS network or the like. Advantageously, cellular networks provide high-bandwidth connectivity, low-cost connectivity, and broad geographic coverage. The air traffic control of Flying Vehicles and Delivery Drones will include, separation assurance between UAVs; navigation assistance; weather and obstacle reporting; monitoring of speed, altitude, location, direction; traffic management; landing services; and real-time control.
We fully expect Airborne Drones and Flying Vehicles to be equipped with mobile devices, such as an embedded mobile device or physical hardware, emulating a mobile device. They can also be equipped with hardware to support multiple cellular networks, to allow for broad coverage support. Flight plans can be constrained based on the availability of wireless cell coverage. The air traffic control can use multiple wireless networks for different purposes such as using the NAS network for location and traffic management and using the cell network for the other functions. In addition to air traffic control, the air traffic control system will support package delivery authorization and management, landing authorization and management, separation assurance through altitude and flying lane coordination. Thus, the air traffic control system, leveraging existing wireless networks, can also provide application-specific support.