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Innovate to save lives and you could win $2 million in prizes in the process. GoAERO is hosting a competition to create safe, autonomy-enabled Emergency Response Flyers, offering over $2 million in prizes to the best thinkers and creators to help build a new era in disaster and rescue response.
This global competition will reward the best innovation in precision, propulsion and autonomy-enabled flight to bring about a next-generation way to reach people in danger. The Emergency Response Flyers will rescue people in danger and respond to disasters by performing critical missions during medical emergencies, natural disasters and humanitarian crises. The competition includes sponsors and partners like Boeing, NASA, RTX, AOPA, Vertical Flight Society and the Air Medical Physician Association among others.
The GoAERO Prize competition will empower teams by providing access to experts in aviation, engineering and design. There will be access to important software, services, funding and legal help along with products to ensure the teams have what is required to compete. The comment period will close on April 8. The GoAERO Stage 1 submission deadline is Oct. 9; the Stage 2 submission deadline is June 18, 2025; Aug. 5 through Dec. 15, 2026 is the Fly-Off qualifying period; and Feb 5, 2027 will be the Fly-Off event. There are $1.5 million in prizes based on performance in the missions. The best performer in each completed mission will win $150,000 and each mission award points toward a $750,000 top prize. Additional prizes include the $100,000 Pratt andamp; Whitney Disruptor Prize for the disruptive advancement of the state of the art and the $100,000 Autonomy Prize for achievements enabled by transferable automation algorithms and/or sensing developments.
In the U.S. alone nearly 4.5 million people are living in "ambulance deserts" where they must wait 25 minutes or longer for a medical crew to arrive in an emergency. There were over 380 natural disasters around the world in 2022 and these impacted 185 million people, with a loss of over 30,000 lives. There were 14.4 billion acres of land burned by wildfires globally from 2001 to 2018. In 2022, about 55 million people around the world were impacted by flooding, including injuries or loss of homes. This competition will aid in bringing better access to people in danger, wherever it is found.
Technologies are emerging to enable simple, more reliable and more versatile aircraft configurations. Battery electric technology has enabled distributed propulsion configurations, crucial to eVTOLs, which require less training, lower cost and less facility requirements. Helicopters, which are often used in rescue operations, may not be accessible for all first responders due to cost, facility requirements and pilot training, and these aircraft are unable to reach tight spaces. Next-gen aircraft can enable more efficient rescue missions and save more people than traditional aircraft and methods.Find out more about the competition and how to compete here
The Emergency Response Flyers are to be designed to hold a single person, with a manikin stand-in for human occupants. How it looks and works is up to the entrant. The flyer should be ready to be deployed quickly on-site, work reliably and efficiently, be versatile enough to fly in different environments, maintain precision and agility to react and adapt to any situation. The final fly-off event will feature five missions that will apply to many real scenarios including delivering a first responder to a scene in a dense urban environment, surrounded by buildings, signs and wires; retrieving an injured person from under a forest canopy; delivering water and rations to communities cut off by natural disasters; rescue victims from car accidents with stand-still traffic; land in earthquake rubble and uneven terrain; rescue in urban tunnels or remote caves; rescue a person who has fallen through the ice on a frozen lake; douse a wildfire; retrieve a drowning victim or a swimmer pulled out by the riptide; or rescue from highrise rooftops.
"When life hangs in the balance, the difference between triumph and tragedy often rests on our ability to move toward the danger, not away," GoAERO said. "To see past the peril and reach people in need. And when those risks are too great, or distances too treacherous for even our most brave, we turn to our intellect and technology to overcome the challenge. To create hope where it didn't exist before. That's why we are introducing this global competition to reward the greatest innovations in emergency response flight."
"We call on the best and brightest entrepreneurs, engineers, innovators and inventors to push the boundaries of current technological achievement to unlock a new generation of disaster and rescue response. Together, we can Save Lives."