GoAERO Launches “Major USD2 Million Competition to Inspire Formation of Emergency Response Flyers”

GoAERO, a human­i­tar­i­an-dri­ven com­pa­ny, has launched a major three-year glob­al com­pe­ti­tion, that is “a glob­al call to entre­pre­neurs, engi­neers, stu­dents and busi­ness­es to design, devel­op and build safe, portable, auton­o­my-enabled fly­ers that can per­form a wide array of res­cue mis­sions and close a crit­i­cal gap in emer­gency response tech­nol­o­gy,” reports a press release. The teams will com­pete for a major USD2 mil­lion or more total prize.

This “Flight for Good” com­pe­ti­tion was launched at the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety (VFS) 2024 Trans­for­ma­tive Con­fer­ence that took place last week (Feb­ru­ary 6th-8th) in San­ta Clara, Cal­i­for­nia. 

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Gwen Lighter, CEO of GoAERO, com­ment­ed, “Emer­gency respon­ders put their lives on the line to help those in need. They deserve the best, most capa­ble tech­nolo­gies that can per­form a wide array of res­cue mis­sions.”

She con­tin­ued, “The prize hopes to inspire and catal­yse the cre­ation of afford­able, portable, ver­sa­tile, and auton­o­my-enabled Emer­gency Response Fly­ers that will help close a crit­i­cal gap in emer­gency response tech­nol­o­gy.”

This GoAERO award is sup­port­ed by a net­work of inter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised lead­ers in aero­space includ­ing Boe­ing, NASA, RTX, Irid­i­um and XWing along­side oth­er aero­space organ­i­sa­tions. As part of the com­pe­ti­tion, teams will have access to men­tors and tech­ni­cal experts from this net­work, as well as train­ings, lec­tures and soft­ware.

Speak­ing at the VFS Con­fer­ence along­side Lighter, Bob Pearce, Asso­ciate Admin­is­tra­tor of Aero­nau­tics Research Mis­sion, NASA ARMD, added, “GoAERO shares in our vision that avi­a­tion can be har­nessed to explore, dis­cov­er and build a bet­ter future for human­i­ty.”

The com­pe­ti­tion con­sists of three stages. 

Stage 1: Requires the dig­i­tal sub­mis­sion of tech­ni­cal papers. 

Stage 2: A build­ing phase that requires con­cept val­i­da­tion through a sub-scale or full-scale fly­er. 

Stage 3: The last stage which fea­tures a “Final Fly-Off”, dur­ing which teams must com­plete five real-world emer­gency response mis­sions with their fly­ers.

Dur­ing this final phase, fly­ers will be judged on pre­ci­sion, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, adver­si­ty, adap­ta­tion and maneu­ver­ing. The team that accu­mu­lates the most points across each cat­e­go­ry will win the USD750,000 Top Prize. Teams also have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to win a USD100,000 Dis­rup­tor Award from RTX and a USD100,000 Auton­o­my Award. Oth­er mon­e­tary prizes will be giv­en out through­out the com­pe­ti­tion.

Announce­ment at VFS Con­fer­ence 

(Cred­it: Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety)

Back­ground

The company’s mis­sion is both to orig­i­nate inno­v­a­tive aer­i­al solu­tions that respond to chal­lenges posed by nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, med­ical emer­gen­cies, cli­mate change and human­i­tar­i­an crises, as well as to cre­ate a col­lab­o­ra­tive net­work across indus­try, gov­ern­ment and avi­a­tion and first respon­der organ­i­sa­tions to ensure the safe and effec­tive future deploy­ment of such life-sav­ing air­craft.

For more infor­ma­tion

GoAEROprize.com

(Top image: Cred­it — cosem.org)

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