Gravity potential battery inverted checkmark course low altitude flight system

Abstract

This invention discloses a low-altitude flight system with an inverted checkpoint flight path powered by a gravitational potential energy battery, belonging to the fields of low-altitude economy and eVTOL aircraft technology. This invention overcomes two major bottlenecks in the current low-altitude industry, abandoning the traditional technical route of existing eVTOL aircraft relying entirely on onboard chemical batteries to counteract gravity. Instead, it utilizes the natural altitude difference of urban areas to construct a natural gravitational potential energy battery. Through external auxiliary power from the municipality, the aircraft climbs to accumulate gravitational potential energy, maintaining gliding with powered attitude to complete the main commuting and logistics flight journeys. At the end of the flight, it quickly switches to the conventional eVTOL vertical takeoff and landing mode for a smooth landing. The entire system consists of two standardized units: a dedicated low-altitude flight vehicle and a standardized containerized takeoff and landing power supply cabin three meters above the ground. A pre-tensioner assembly ensures safe power supply and automatic cable retrieval during the aircraft's climb phase. The system uses a base flight altitude of 2,000 meters, which can be flexibly adjusted. It employs a fixed 45-degree climb angle, a 10:1 fixed glide ratio, and an inverted checkpoint dedicated flight path architecture. Combined with an artificial intelligence model, it achieves intelligent airspace scheduling and fully automated takeoff and landing control of the aircraft. This invention employs a closed, isolated takeoff and landing mode at a height of three meters above the ground, completely avoiding the safety hazards caused by the mixing of ground and air traffic spaces. It features low overall energy consumption, controllable maintenance costs, and the ability to achieve affordable pricing for low-altitude travel after large-scale operation. The solution perfectly addresses the pain points of commuting in mountainous cities, effectively alleviating traffic pressure on core urban roads. It also possesses the practical capability to replace ring-city rail transit in megacities, opening up low-altitude travel channels between suburban areas and the main urban area. Based on a lightweight, modular deployment model, it is easily mass-produced and deployed in urban networks. It aligns closely with national policies supporting the development of the low-altitude economy and reducing overall social travel and logistics costs, possessing extremely high urban application value and commercialization prospects.

Description

Technical Field

[0001] This invention belongs to the technical fields of urban low-altitude passenger commuting, low-altitude logistics transportation, electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft modification, urban low-altitude commuting infrastructure deployment, and low-altitude economic large-scale operation. Specifically, it relates to a flight system that utilizes the altitude difference to construct a natural gravitational potential energy battery, relies on municipal auxiliary power to climb and store energy, maintains a powered attitude to release energy while gliding, adopts an inverted checkpoint fixed exclusive route, and uses a container-type cabin three meters above the ground for fixed-point take-off and landing. It is suitable for commuting in plains and mountainous cities and as an alternative to urban rail transit in megacities, realizing short-distance low-altitude affordable travel and low-altitude logistics delivery in urban areas. Background Technology

[0002] Currently, short-distance commuting in cities mainly relies on private cars, taxis, surface buses, and subway rail transit, which generally suffer from regular road congestion. Mountainous cities have large altitude differences, and the winding mountain roads cause redundant travel distances. There are also many practical problems such as dense subway stations, long stop times at each station, high construction costs, difficulties in land acquisition and demolition, and heavy financial burdens for later operation and maintenance.

[0003] The technological approaches of mainstream domestic eVTOL R&D companies are becoming increasingly homogenized, all adopting the design concept of using large-capacity onboard chemical batteries to completely counteract gravity, thus encountering a development bottleneck. To increase range, the only option is to increase battery capacity, resulting in increased aircraft weight, structural complexity, and high manufacturing costs; reducing battery capacity, on the other hand, leads to insufficient range and hinders commercialization. Currently, the low-altitude flight industry faces two core development challenges: first, the larger the onboard battery capacity, the higher the overall production cost, significantly increasing the difficulty of market penetration; second, low-altitude passenger and logistics flights can only generate practical value through high-frequency, routine operation, and the current traditional airspace management model, which uses single-point, single-line, single-approval for large civil aviation aircraft, severely restricts the large-scale development of new low-altitude business models.

[0004] Existing low-altitude aircraft mostly adopt a free airspace and disorderly flight mode, without dedicated fixed routes or ground-isolated take-off and landing sites. The flight space is intertwined with ground pedestrian and vehicle traffic areas, which easily leads to the risk of bird strikes. Low-altitude airspace scheduling and management are difficult, making it impossible to deploy take-off and landing points on a large scale, making it difficult to achieve affordable travel pricing, and it does not meet the application conditions to replace urban subway loop lines.

[0005] Derivative flight schemes such as aerial cable traction and ground rail traction have complex overall system structures and numerous supporting facilities. They face many restrictions on urban construction and deployment, and have high engineering implementation costs. They can only serve as auxiliary transportation schemes and cannot serve as the mainstream low-altitude transportation carrier in cities.

[0006] Existing technologies do not rely on first principles to build a gravitational potential energy utilization system, do not establish a natural gravitational potential energy battery energy conversion mechanism, lack inverted dedicated flight routes and a three-meter-high enclosed nanny cabin network structure, and do not have original complete solutions that can be adapted to both mountainous cities and mega-city ring rail transit alternatives. Summary of the Invention

[0007] 1. Purpose of the invention This invention aims to overcome the shortcomings of existing eVTOL aircraft, such as relying on onboard chemical batteries to resist gravity throughout the entire flight, high operating energy consumption, expensive manufacturing costs, cumbersome airspace management, mixed take-off and landing sites, high travel pricing, limited deployment scale, inability to replace subway loop lines, difficulty in adapting to the commuting shortcomings of mountainous cities, and excessive investment in the construction of ring rail transit in megacities. It provides a low-altitude flight system with inverted gravitational potential energy batteries, which utilizes the elevation difference of the city to create natural gravitational potential energy batteries. The aircraft climbs and stores energy through external municipal power, and relies on micro-power attitude to maintain gliding to complete the main travel route, realizing low-cost, high-safety, and scalable network operation of low-altitude travel.

[0008] 2. Overall System Composition The entire system consists of two types of standardized modular units, with a simple structure that facilitates industrial mass production and rapid deployment throughout the city.

[0009] (1) Dedicated low-altitude travel aircraft Based on the existing mature eVTOL aircraft platform, a streamlined and optimized modification was carried out, which involved removing large-capacity redundant airborne chemical batteries, eliminating complex tilt linkage structures, removing unnecessary load-bearing components and aerodynamic structures from the fuselage, and retaining the original fuselage shape, original flight control system and basic power components.

[0010] With a fixed climb angle of 45 degrees and a base flight altitude of 2,000 meters, the flight altitude range can be flexibly adjusted according to urban terrain, commuting distance, aircraft glide ratio, and airspace management regulations. It is matched with a standard glide ratio of 10:1 and is suitable for low-speed stable cruise operation at 200 to 300 kilometers per hour.

[0011] The aircraft is divided into several modular models for single, three, and four passengers, and a dedicated low-altitude small-parcel logistics carrier model is being developed simultaneously to fully cover urban short-distance point-to-point daily commuting and same-city logistics delivery scenarios.

[0012] (2) Standardized take-off and landing power supply cabin three meters off the ground It uses a standard shipping container as the outer shell and integrates mature battery compartments and electromagnetic field combination modules for new energy vehicles, eliminating the need to develop special equipment.

[0013] The system integrates a municipal power grid interface, an aircraft attitude fixation device, an automatic power replenishment unit, standby protection for flight equipment, and a secondary takeoff preparation function.

[0014] With standardized prefabricated production dimensions and equipment interfaces, it can be quickly deployed in various urban locations such as residential communities, commercial districts, transportation hubs, and urban ring road traffic nodes.

[0015] 3. Definition and Height Adaptation Principle of Gravitational Potential Energy Cell By utilizing the natural elevation difference in the city, a natural gravitational potential energy battery is constructed, with 2,000 meters set as the basic design reference height.

[0016] In practical engineering applications, the system can be flexibly adjusted within the reference altitude range based on urban topography, commuting distance, aircraft gliding performance, low-altitude airspace control rules, and natural altitude differences in mountainous cities, without changing the core physical operating principle and overall architecture of the system.

[0017] During the takeoff and climb phase, the aircraft is powered by an external power supply from the municipal power grid to ascend and accumulate gravitational potential energy. During the cruise phase, the stored gravitational potential energy is converted into flight kinetic energy, and the aircraft enters a micro-powered attitude to maintain gliding operation, consuming only a small amount of electrical energy to maintain stable flight attitude.

[0018] 4. Inverted checkmark route and flight operation mode The aircraft climbs from the starting point, three meters above the ground in the nanny cabin, at a fixed angle of 45 degrees to the set reference altitude range, simultaneously completing the accumulation of gravitational potential energy and the reserve of initial horizontal flight speed.

[0019] It enters a micro-powered attitude to maintain gliding cruise by adopting a fixed gliding ratio of 10:1, consuming only a small amount of electrical energy to maintain flight stability. After reaching the target airspace, it quickly switches to the conventional eVTOL vertical takeoff and landing flight mode and smoothly completes the cabin landing.

[0020] A single complete flight trajectory is shaped like an inverted checkmark. Each set of start and end cabins corresponds to a dedicated and fixed flight route. All routes are independent of each other and do not overlap or interfere with each other.

[0021] The system connects to an AI-powered big data model intelligent scheduling and control platform to enable automatic registration of low-altitude airspace flights, staggered control of flight schedules, and fully automated take-off and landing operations for aircraft, thereby fundamentally solving industry problems such as cumbersome approval processes for low-altitude routes and difficulties in managing airspace flight conflicts.

[0022] During the power supply phase of the aircraft's climb, a ground pretensioner system is provided, which, together with a small docking aircraft and a front-end precision docking robot, completes the precise docking of the power supply cable during takeoff. Once the flight altitude and speed are reached, the cable is automatically and precisely separated, and the intelligent control system completes the automatic neat and retrieval of the cable, completely eliminating ground safety hazards.

[0023] 5. Pricing Mechanism for Low-Energy Operation and Inclusive Mobility Based on physical principles, calculations show that the comprehensive power consumption of a single short-distance commuter flight of 20 to 30 kilometers in urban areas is only four to six kilowatt-hours, resulting in extremely low basic energy operating costs.

[0024] Both the aircraft and the ground support cabin adopt a standardized mass production model, which continuously reduces equipment manufacturing costs and subsequent operation and maintenance costs.

[0025] Once a single flight system reaches a cumulative annual passenger volume of one million in a corresponding city, the price of travel services can be reduced to half the cost of a traditional taxi ride in the same city, truly realizing universal access to low-altitude travel.

[0026] 6. Fully enclosed safety structure design three meters above the ground. All navigation cabins adopt a fully enclosed protective structure three meters above the ground. The aircraft can only complete takeoff, landing, power replenishment, standby storage, and preparation for a second takeoff inside the navigation cabin.

[0027] The entire process of takeoff and landing of the aircraft is conducted within a physically enclosed and isolated space, completely avoiding pedestrian and motor vehicle traffic areas within three meters of the ground, thus completely eliminating various safety hazards caused by the mixing of ground and air space.

[0028] 7. Comprehensive Security Protection System The cruise reference flight altitude is far from the main airspace where urban birds are active, and the low-speed cruise mode of 200 to 300 kilometers per hour greatly reduces the risk of the aircraft being damaged by bird strikes.

[0029] Dedicated fixed flight routes combined with artificial intelligence-driven staggered scheduling avoid airspace collisions and conflicts from the source; the gliding flight mode has a natural fault tolerance capability, and when the aircraft's power system malfunctions, it can rely on a fixed glide ratio to glide to the nearest backup cabin to complete an emergency landing.

[0030] The aircraft adopts an aerospace-grade structural redundancy design and a flight control system redundancy design, and its overall travel safety factor is superior to that of conventional modes of transportation such as private cars and taxis.

[0031] 8. Large-scale deployment and alternative applications to subway loop lines This point-to-point inverted signage eVTOL flight system is a high-quality air travel solution for optimizing short-distance commuting in cities. Under the premise of strictly adhering to aviation-grade safety operation standards, it can quickly divert approximately 10% of commuting demand in the city's core congested road sections to air travel, effectively relieving urban traffic pressure on key populations, congested road sections, and core traffic nodes.

[0032] The project can deploy 30,000 to 300,000 standardized nanny cabins throughout the city, fully covering residential areas, commercial clusters, transportation hubs, and urban ring road nodes. In its initial phase, the project can meet more than 10% of the city's total travel demand.

[0033] Multiple aircraft are deployed at urban ring road traffic nodes to fly back and forth in a circular manner, adopting a direct spatial travel mode, without having to follow the subway's station-by-station stopping, detours, and waiting for passenger flow.

[0034] The project adopts a light-asset modular deployment model, with construction investment far lower than that of urban rail transit. It does not require large-scale land acquisition and demolition or tunnel excavation and construction, and there is no long-term high financial pressure for operation and maintenance. Flight schedules can be dynamically adjusted according to passenger flow during morning and evening peak hours. It has the technical conditions and economic advantages to fully replace existing and planned urban subway loop lines and ring rail transit.

[0035] 9. Adaptive Implementation Plans for Different Types of Cities Mountainous city adaptation scenarios: Precisely adapts to the pain points of travel in mountainous cities, such as large terrain undulations, inconvenient cross-river and cross-mountain travel, and excessively long distances for winding mountain roads. It is not limited by terrain and ground road network, and realizes direct point-to-point travel in a straight line, which greatly shortens the commuting time and reduces the unnecessary travel mileage.

[0036] Suitable for megacities: Deploy chauffeur cabins at high density along the city's outer ring road and radial transportation network, and rely on inverted fixed flight routes to achieve rapid direct commuting to ring road transportation nodes, eliminating the need to build new ring road subway and urban rail transit lines, saving huge amounts of infrastructure investment and long-term operation and maintenance funds.

[0037] Suitable scenarios for suburban areas: Establish dedicated low-altitude flight passages between idle suburban areas and the main urban area to meet the daily commuting and same-city delivery needs of suburban residents and revitalize the development resources of idle suburban areas.

[0038] 10. Technical route division This gravity potential energy battery inverted checkpoint low-altitude flight system is the core and main solution for the large-scale promotion of low-altitude travel; complex auxiliary flight solutions such as aerial cable traction and ground rail traction are only archived as alternative technical solutions and are not included in the mainstream urban low-altitude travel large-scale operation system. Beneficial effects

[0039] This invention represents a fundamental original technological innovation that directly addresses two core development challenges in the low-altitude flight industry. It builds a complete original technology system based on first principles, breaking away from the industry's inherent technology route where eVTOL aircraft rely entirely on chemical batteries to counteract gravity. It pioneers a new operating logic that relies on natural gravitational potential energy batteries to climb and store energy, and micro-power attitude maintenance to release energy during gliding, significantly reducing flight energy consumption and overall operating costs from a physical perspective.

[0040] Based on the mature eVTOL aircraft models on the market, it is simplified and upgraded without the need to carry out the whole aircraft research and development work from scratch. The research and development cycle is short, it fits the existing low-altitude industry support system, and it is easy to quickly mass-produce and deploy.

[0041] The ground-based nanny cabin reuses standard container shells and mature supporting modules for new energy vehicles, eliminating the need for customized R&D of special equipment. The equipment is inexpensive, prefabricated and installed quickly, and can be deployed flexibly and conveniently in urban locations. Combined with a pre-tensioner power cable recycling system, it improves the safety design of the entire power supply process during the aircraft's climb phase.

[0042] With a fully enclosed, isolated take-off and landing design three meters off the ground, it isolates ground pedestrian and vehicle traffic, ensuring high overall safety performance and widespread public acceptance. It also supports high-density network operation throughout the city.

[0043] The inverted checkmark system, coupled with an AI-powered intelligent dispatching system, completely overcomes the industry's development bottlenecks, such as cumbersome low-altitude airspace flight registration and difficulty in managing flight route conflicts.

[0044] The ultra-low operating energy consumption combined with large-scale commercial operation enables affordable pricing for low-altitude travel, which is in line with the national policy direction of reducing social travel and logistics costs and vigorously supporting the development of the low-altitude economy.

[0045] The efficiency of direct spatial access far exceeds that of various ground transportation modes, and it can replace urban subway loop transportation systems on a large scale, saving huge amounts of investment in rail transit infrastructure and long-term operation and maintenance expenses.

[0046] It is naturally suited to the travel needs of cities with complex mountainous terrain, and can also be extended to the field of low-altitude intra-city logistics and distribution. It has a wide range of application scenarios, highly replicable technical solutions, low barriers to commercialization, and broad market prospects. Detailed Implementation

[0047] Select existing mature aircraft product platforms from leading domestic eVTOL companies and uniformly streamline and optimize them: remove large-capacity airborne energy storage batteries, simplify the tilt linkage mechanical structure, eliminate redundant structures in the fuselage, and strictly adhere to the standards of a fixed 45-degree climb angle, a floating reference flight altitude of 2,000 meters, a standard glide ratio of 10:1, and a low-speed cruise of 200 to 300 kilometers per hour to finalize and mass-produce single-person, three-person, and four-person manned aircraft, as well as low-altitude logistics aircraft.

[0048] Standardized, batch-prefabricated, three-meter-high containerized take-off and landing power supply cabins with uniform and standardized external dimensions, power supply interfaces, and aircraft attitude fixing docking ports. The cabin integrates a new energy vehicle battery compartment, electromagnetic field functional modules, and municipal power supply access components, and is equipped with a complete set of components for the pre-tensioner power cable recycling system.

[0049] Nursery cabins are deployed in batches in urban residential areas, commercial districts, transportation hubs, and urban ring road nodes. Multiple aircraft are deployed along the urban ring road to carry out cyclical round-trip flights.

[0050] Each group of take-off and arrival cabins is equipped with a dedicated and unique inverted checkmark fixed flight route. The whole system is connected to the artificial intelligence big model intelligent scheduling platform to realize automatic registration of low-altitude airspace flights, staggered scheduling of flight times, and intelligent control of the entire process of fully automatic take-off and landing of aircraft.

[0051] Based on the project's operational scale, the service fee for low-altitude travel will be gradually reduced, and commercial operations for daily passenger commuting and same-city small-parcel logistics delivery will be fully launched in urban areas. Priority will be given to implementing cross-mountain and cross-river low-altitude commuting projects in mountainous cities, and a ring-city low-altitude commuting network will be established in megacities to replace the traditional ring-city rail transit. At the same time, low-altitude passages between suburban areas and the main urban area will be built to gradually divert short-distance ground traffic in urban areas and replace the traditional urban short-distance ground commuting and urban ring-city rail transit system.

Claims

1. A low-altitude flight system with an inverted gravitational potential energy battery and a checkpoint route, characterized in that, The system includes a dedicated low-altitude travel aircraft and a standardized take-off and landing power supply cabin at a height of three meters above the ground. The system utilizes the altitude difference of the city to construct a natural gravitational potential energy battery. With the help of municipal auxiliary power, the aircraft climbs to accumulate gravitational potential energy and relies on powered attitude to maintain gliding to complete the main commuting and logistics routes. A reference altitude of two thousand meters is set, which can be flexibly adjusted according to the urban topography, commuting straight-line distance, aircraft glide ratio, and low-altitude airspace control requirements.

2. The low-altitude flight system with inverted gravitational potential energy battery according to claim 1, characterized in that, The dedicated low-altitude travel aircraft is a streamlined and optimized version of the existing mature eVTOL aircraft platform. It reduces redundant large-capacity onboard chemical batteries, eliminates complex tilt linkage mechanisms, removes unnecessary load-bearing structures and aerodynamic structures from the fuselage, and retains the original fuselage shape, flight control system and basic power unit. The aircraft is designed and produced according to a fixed climb angle of 45 degrees, a standard glide ratio of 10:1, and a low-speed cruise condition of 200 to 300 kilometers per hour. It is available in single-person, three-person, and four-person manned flight configurations as well as a low-altitude small-item logistics transport configuration.

3. The low-altitude flight system with inverted gravitational potential energy battery according to claim 1, characterized in that, The standardized three-meter-high takeoff and landing power supply cabin uses a general standard shipping container as its outer shell, and integrates a new energy vehicle battery compartment and an electromagnetic field combination module inside. The cabin is equipped with a municipal power grid access interface, an aircraft attitude fixing mechanism, an automatic power supply unit, standby storage and protection, and a secondary takeoff preparation function. It adopts prefabricated standardized dimensions and a unified docking interface, and can be deployed in batches at various locations throughout the city. The cabin is equipped with a pre-tensioner power recovery component.

4. The low-altitude flight system with inverted gravitational potential energy battery according to claim 1, characterized in that, The aircraft ascends from the starting cabin at a fixed 45-degree angle to the reference altitude range to accumulate gravitational potential energy. It then enters a powered attitude to maintain gliding cruise at a fixed glide ratio of 10:1, relying solely on a small amount of electrical energy to maintain flight attitude stability. Upon reaching the target airspace, it quickly switches to the conventional eVTOL vertical takeoff and landing mode to complete the cabin landing. A single complete flight trajectory is inverted checkmark form, with each set of starting and ending cabins corresponding to a dedicated fixed flight route. Each route is independent and does not intersect with others.

5. The low-altitude flight system with inverted gravitational potential energy battery according to claim 4, characterized in that, The entire system is connected to an artificial intelligence big data model intelligent scheduling platform, which can realize automatic registration of low-altitude airspace flights, staggered control of flight schedules, and fully automatic take-off and landing operation control of aircraft.

6. The low-altitude flight system with inverted gravitational potential energy battery according to claim 1, characterized in that, The cabin adopts a fully enclosed structure three meters above the ground. The aircraft can only complete takeoff, landing, power replenishment and standby storage operations inside the cabin, and the entire process physically isolates pedestrian and motor vehicle passage space within three meters of the ground.

7. The low-altitude flight system with inverted gravitational potential energy battery according to claim 1, characterized in that, The system consumes four to six kilowatt-hours of electricity for a single short-distance commuter flight within a city of 20 to 30 kilometers. Once a single system meets the annual cumulative number of takeoffs and landings target in the corresponding city, the pricing of low-altitude travel services can be reduced to half the cost of a traditional taxi ride within the same city.

8. The low-altitude flight system with inverted gravitational potential energy battery according to claim 1, characterized in that, This system can divert 10% of the commuter travel demand on the city's core congested routes to air travel, precisely manage key traffic congestion nodes in the city, and deploy 30,000 to 300,000 "nanny cabins" throughout the city. It adopts a direct spatial travel mode and can completely replace the existing and planned urban subway loop lines and ring rail transit networks.

9. The low-altitude flight system with inverted gravitational potential energy battery according to claim 1, characterized in that, This system is adapted to travel scenarios in mountainous cities with large terrain undulations and redundant mileage for winding mountain roads. It can realize point-to-point commuting in a straight line across mountains and rivers, and at the same time, it can build low-altitude passage connecting idle suburban areas with the main urban area.

10. The low-altitude flight system with inverted gravitational potential energy battery according to claim 1, characterized in that, Aerial tracking and ground tracking traction flight schemes are only alternative technical routes. The gravity potential energy battery inverted checkpoint low-altitude flight system is the core solution promoted for large-scale commercial operation of urban low-altitude travel.