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AutoTug

Competition

BACKGROUND

I believe that there is a market for an all electric and potentially fully automated light aircraft tug that can assist the aircraft operator with the roll-out and roll-in aspects of aircraft hangaring. Perhaps two models: one for aircraft up to 2500 lbs., one for aircraft up to 4000 lbs.

While not common, in my experience, currently available tugs are in use by some operators, principally of two types: gas-powered, and corded electric. Both types are designed to be attached and detached and operated by hand.

I believe that if the price point is low enough, a fully electric battery-operated and intelligent un-tethered tug would have strong potential in the market.

Aircraft operators are not necessarily stingy, but they want decent value for their money. Gas-powered tugs are generally priced at $1200-1500. If it is possible to build an untethered tug at that same price point, the project could be worth pursuing.

Imagine rolling to a stop in front of your hangar after landing, using an app on your phone, activating the intelligent tug, and simply watching it roll out of the hanger, position in front of the nose wheel, pick up the nose wheel, and then roll the plane into the hangar, all without human guidance. This little trip into "The Jetsons" would be attractive to pilots.

POTENTIAL PROJECT RISKS

There are some risk issues with such a project:

  • LIABILITY: If the unit, under no direct guidance of a human operator, fails and damages the aircraft of the hangar, this could kill the company.
  • FEASIBILITY: There appears to be enough off-the-shelf technology that could be used as a basis for such a project platform, but this may prove to be untrue, without significant development of special-purpose electronics and mechanical hardware.
  • AFTER-SALE SUPPORT: Unless the product is very easy to setup/install and use, there will be high overhead in supporting the user.

PRODUCTIZATION PLAN

  • The project will be designed and productized in a phased manner:
  1. PHASE I: "Manual guidance"
    • Fundamental platform created
      • Physical chassis layout complete
      • locomotion system complete
    • Workable wheel grapple or mounting mechanism developed
    • Tethered control via wired X-Box style hand-controller
    • Power store and recharging mechanism developed
  2. PHASE II: "Manual, un-tethered"
    • Introduction of wireless control
      • Wireless X-Box style hand-controller, AND/OR,
      • R/C car style RF controller
      • Bluetooth smart-phone app(lication)
  3. PHASE III: "Automation A"
    • Introduction of Proximity and Spatial sensing
      • Alerts and Warnings about nearby obstacles
      • Initial effort to spatial mapping in memory
  4. PHASE IIIB: "Automation B"
    • Self-guided positioning with the nose- or tail-wheel prior to mounting
    • Auto-mounting of nose- or tail-wheel
    • Refined Alerts and Warnings about wingtip and empanage clearances
  5. PHASE IIIC: "Automation C"
    • Full automation
      • Self-guided positioning and mounting of nose- or tail-wheel
      • Self-guided movement of aircraft into storage space (hangar)
      • Self-guided unmounting and parking at charge station

GENERAL CONCEPT NOTES

  • Initially (or as an over-ride to eventual full-robot-automation) use a Dead-Man switch. Only when the switch is engaged is the unit activated for movement.
  • Utilize as many off-the-shelf elements as possible:
    • Standard gaming console controller for tethered operation
    • Propeller, Pi, Beaglebone as heart and brain
    • Motors and running gear
    • Spatial sensors
      • Polaroid ultra-sound range finder?
      • Scanning laser beams?

KEY MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL/AI ELEMENTS

  1. All electrical operation
    • Self-charging capability
      • Aircraft
      • Solar
      • Docking station
  2. Nose- or Tail-wheel turn-table
    • 360-degree rotation (possibly only 180- to 270-degrees needed), using a turntable/lazy-susan centered just ahead of the two driving wheels
    • Mechanism for grappling, and mounting the wheel on the turn-table, possibilities include:
      • ramp of pin-rollers to a v-shaped tip-over trough that locks into upright position (used by much of the competition)
      • lateral lift and load using bell-crank style lift (risk to this is that bell-cranks must carry full wight of wheel during loading)
      • dragger-style load (see Dragger tug)
    • Sensors preventing motion of tug in proximity of wheel, unless properly mounted on turntable
  3. Spatial sensing
    • detect horizontal extents of the aircraft (nose, wingtips, empanage)
    • detect probable collision proximity
    • sense obstacles in path
  4. Automation
    • auto-position of tug and load of nose- or tail-wheel
    • in conjunction with spatial sensing, automated steering and relocation of aircraft
    • auto-unload of wheel, and parking (possibly at a self-charging station)

REFERENCES

AOPA Trends Report (2019)