Higherway Vehicles

There are presently six Higherway vehicles in preliminary design, the Baz, Owl, Pelican, Pheasant, Quail, and Dove. There will be other vehicles for specific purposes later, especially for guideway maintenance (inspection, tree trimming, cleaning and painting). All the vehicles have a maximum cruising speed of 45 meters/second (100 mph) and are streamlined to reduce aerodynamic drag. All passengers and cargo should be restrained.

Baz (Hebrew for falcon) is a carrier vehicle. It can carry the Owl cargo pod, Pelican wheelchair pod, Pheasant and Quail skyhook dualmode vehicles. Because it automatically mates and demates with the pods and vehicles it has automatic alignment and communications with them. Some features are:

• Two permanent magnet brushless DC motorwheels with solid rubber tires, regenerative braking
• Liquid/air cooling for motorwheels and controllers to reduce size and increase reliability
• Idler wheels which push up on underside of track to provide additional traction only when needed. They are powered and synchronized to the correct speed to eliminate skidding when they are engaged.
• Four stabilizer wheels to keep the Baz from falling through the track in Y-sections (merge/diverge sections). They are powered and synchronized to the correct speed to eliminate skidding when they are engaged.
• An obstacle detection system (sonar, lidar, radar?) senses tree branches in the vehicle's path or people in stations and the computers control the brakes as needed to avoid colliding with them.
• Large brake shoes for emergency braking squeeze the track on the same surfaces as the motorwheels and idler wheels. Since they are applied to large horizontal surfaces, they will work in merge/diverge sections and will stop the vehicles very quickly if necessary in an emergency. We are designing for an emergency braking rate of sixty meters per second per second.
• Electronic steering control using proximity sensors backed up by secondary mechanical steering control. (The secondary turning control is partially covered by U.S. Patent #5060575 assigned to Pathfinder Systems, Inc.)
• Two power pickoffs (rollers or sliders) connect to the high voltage aluminum-stainless steel power/guidebar and four pickoffs connect to the inside vertical lower track surfaces (power return).
• Batteries help buffer computer and low-power electronics from noise and have enough energy to take the vehicles to a stop if there is a power failure in the guideway.
• Redundant computers control the vehicles.
• Damped suspension between motorwheels and skyhook interface have weight sensors and allow pods to swing out in curves or cross winds, but lock in vertical position when stopped.
• The front end of the Baz has a shock absorber /bumper and provision for pushing or being pulled by another vehicle. The back end has mating parts for pulling or being pushed. If a Baz or Dove is disabled another one can take over its steering and braking functions and pull/push it at a slow speed.
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Owl carries two pallets (1 m x 1.2m each) with cargo. It will have rollers and belts for automatic loading and unloading. The maximum cargo mass (design goal) is 500 kg, with a gross vehicle weight (including the Baz) of less than one ton (900 kg). It will be the largest and heaviest of the pods, and a design driver for the guideway. As you can see from the drawings below it will have four sliding doors. Not shown are the automatic cargo restraint nets and locking devices to hold it securely to the dock while loading and unloading.

Pelican is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act and carries a person in a wheelchair or baby carriage, bicycle, shopping cart, large packages plus one adult human or dog or monkey. There will be two fold-down kiddie seats so that a mother and two babies or toddlers can travel with a baby carriage (Babies and toddlers cannot ride in the baby carriage on the Pelican, they must be restrained in the backward-facing kiddie seats).  It will have automatic restraints for the wheelchair and person in the wheelchair. The Pelican has a front door for wheelchairs to back into and a side door for pedestrians. It is designed to satisfy the Americans with Disabilities Act and be no bigger or heavier than the Owl.

Pheasant is for those whose origin and destination are 0.5 to 10 km from a stop. It is battery powered to run on city streets but is carried by a Baz on the guideway. It is designed to not exceed the weight and size of the Owlwhen on the guideway. It carries one licensed driver and one passenger. The wheels raise to reduce aerodynamic drag when a Baz carrys it. Wheel shields will extend when the wheels retract to protect pedestrians underneath the guideway from falling ice or dirt clods.  Pheasant has cooperative automatic alignment and communications with the Baz. 
The general size and layout of the Pheasant are similar to the Volkswagen 1 Liter and the Bertone Slim, but it will not have an internal combustion engine.  Another similar vehicle is the Commuter Cars Tango, which is battery powered.  In very narrow vehicles it is important for stability to keep the center of mass low.  Tango achieves this by placing the batteries as low as possible, while the 1-Liter and Slim put the people and engines low.  Pheasant will have the batteries and people low.
There is currently no plan to provide for charging the batteries while the Pheasant is on the guideway, as some other dualmode systems do.  The reason for this is the added cost and increased failure modes from the power interface to the Baz and the relatively short time that the Pheasant will be on the guideway.  We believe it is better to charge the batteries during the long times that the Pheasant is parked.

Quail is for those whose origin and destination are 0.5 to 10 km from a stop. It is battery powered to run on city streets but is carried by a Baz on the guideway. It is designed to not exceed the weight and size of the Owl when on the guideway. It has three wheels which retract like aircraft landing gear when on the guideway. It has cooperative automatic alignment and communications with the Baz. It carries one licensed driver.  A somewhat similar recent production vehicle is the Corbin Sparrow, which is battery powered and carries one driver.

Dove carries two people. It is designed for low life cycle cost. Because the gross weight of the Dove passenger pod is less than half the weight of the pods carried by the Baz, each Dove has its own permanently attached carrier vehicle which is the approximate size of the Baz but is lighter and cheaper. There are automatic passenger restraints which engage when the doors close.