A team of Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL) graduate students is one of the winners of the Boeing GoAERO competition Stage 1 award. The ASDL team was one of 14 NASA University Innovation Award winners.

GoAERO is a three-year global competition bringing the world’s brightest minds together to focus on a singular mission: Saving Lives. Teams participating will design and build the first autonomy-enabled Emergency Response Flyer, a high-tech aircraft that will help response teams reach people, places, and crises faster and easier than ever before.

“We are thrilled to be named one of the winners of stage 1 of this competition,” said Professor Mavris, director of ASDL. “The GoAERO competition is addressing a critical topic, and we are glad to have opportunity to help develop a vehicle that can play a role in saving lives.”

ASDL’s Stage 1 submission was a design report documenting the proposed vehicle, which is called the Autonomous Support for Disaster Lifesaver (ASDL), a fully autonomous hexacopter optimized for rescue missions.

Team members include:

• Carl Johnson (team lead)
• Hussein Ali
• Qixun Li
• Nathnael Geneti
• Ariadne Papamichou
• Nada Himdi
• Jocelyn Mendoza
• Kevin Florian
• Tavish Pattanayak
• Salma Walker
• Petros Famellos