Congratulations to all our innovators and teams for completing Phase I of the GoFly challenge! Over 600 Innovators from over 30 countries across 6 continents have submitted their designs. We were impressed with the technical prowess and the creativity of a multitude of entries, and we have selected the 10 winners of Phase I of the GoFly Challenge.
Over the course of several weeks, our panel of 97 industry experts with over a millennium of combined industry experience carefully evaluated each individual aspect of every submission in accordance with the official Technical Guidelines. The pool of judges included numerous Chief Engineers, Flight Test Engineers, Senior Technical Fellows, Pilots, and Esteemed Academics from a collection of the world’s most innovative and prestigious aerospace companies and academia.
And now, after the rigorous judging process, GoFly is pleased to introduce to the world the 10 Winners of Phase I of the GoFly Challenge (in alphabetical order):
Team: Aeroxo LV // Device Name: ERA Aviabike
Team’s Device Description: ERA Aviabike is a tilt rotor aerial vehicle type that combines VTOL capabilities of helicopter with range and speed of fixed-wing aircraft.
Team Members: Vladimir Spinko (captain), Eldar Razroev, Ilya Golubovich, Adel Khaliullin, Alexander Remizov, Vitaly Grishanov, Andrew Ukhnevich, Fedor Zagumennov, Alexander Krasnov
Country of Origin: Latvia
Team: Blue Sparrow // Device Name: Blue Sparrow
Team’s Device Description: Students and faculty at Penn State University Aerospace Engineering designed Blue Sparrow to be scalable, robust, safe, and fun to fly.
Team Members: Jack Langelaan (Captain), Amy Pritchett, Mostafa Elghorab, Alberto Spagnoli, John Ciraulo, Jamil Wen, Zhouzhou Chen, Wei-Cheng Hsu, Eric Johnson
Country of Origin: United States
Team: Georgia Tech // Device Name: HummingBuzz
Team’s Device Description: HummingBuzz utilizes the fully electric, ducted coaxial rotor configuration, with the fuselage on top, in the shape of a motorcycle.
Team Members: Yuanxin Shen (captain), Brian Eberle, Alistair Sequeira, Daniel P. Schrage, Ashok Sylvester, Suzie Wang
Country of Origin: United States
Team: Leap // Device Name: Vantage
Team’s Device Description: Vantage is a five-rotor airbike.
Team Members: Bruno Howard (captain), Pat Branch, Ryan Wallace, Sangeet Shah, Jakob Howard, Philipp Seeger, Nikhil Aggarwal, Karim Gharaibeh
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Team: Mamba // Device Name: Mamba
Team’s Device Description: The Mamba is a hexcopter emphasizing safety, certifiability, and performance. Shrouded rotors and a tilting empennage are incorporated.
Team Members: Lauren Schumacher (captain), Dr. Ronald Barrett, Patrick McNamee, John Haug, Nicholas Werner, Joshua Mudd, Dalton Prins, Martin Mendoza, Ankur Patil
Country of Origin: United States
Team: Scoop // Device Name: Pegasus I
Team’s Device Description: The Pegasus is a Y6 tilt rotor with a wing and a hybrid powertrain with a cruise speed of 70 knots.
Team Members: Richard 'Alex' Smolen (captain)
Country of Origin: United States
Team: Silverwing // Device Name: S1
Team’s Device Description: This device is a canard-wing configuration around a person in motorcycle-like orientation powered by two electric motors with ducted rotors. The aircraft makes a 90 degree transition from vertical take-off to horizontal cruise flight.
Team Members: Victor Sonneveld (captain), James Murdza, Quint Houwink, Ralph Krook, Luuk van der Linde, Thom van den Homberg, Rutger van Brouwershaven, Oliver Witteman
Country of Origin: Netherlands
Team: teTra // Device Name: teTra 3
Team’s Device Description: teTra 3 is not only efficient enough, but also stylish enough to meet commercial requirements.
Team Members: Tasuku Nakai (captain), Masaru Okada, Akihiro Mizutani, Koya Kuwamura, Kazunori Saito, Kenichi Kajitani, Tetsuya Matsuhisa, Yasuyuki Shimizu
Country of Origin: Japan
Team: Texas A&M University // Device Name: Harmony
Team’s Device Description: Harmony is a high-TRL compact rotorcraft designed to minimize noise and maximize efficiency, safety, reliability, and flight experience.
Team Members: Moble Benedict (captain), David Coleman, Atanu Halder, Andrew Riha, Bochan Lee, Farid Saemi, Carl Runco, Vishaal Subramanian, Eric Greenwood, Vinod Lakshminarayan, Nima Ershad, Aswathi Sudhir, Hunter Denton, Adam Kellen, Bharath Govindrajan, Ananth Sridharan
Country of Origin: United States
Team: Trek Aerospace // Device Name: FlyKart 2
Team’s Device Description: FlyKart 2 is a single-seat, open-cockpit, 10-rotor, ducted fan, electrically-powered, VTOL aircraft.
Team Members: Robert Bulaga (captain), Jose Fierro, Joshua Portlock
Country of Origin: United States
Please join us in celebrating the work of the Phase I Winners of the GoFly Challenge! Each winning Team will receive $20,000 for their efforts and innovation, as they continue on in their journey toward the Final Fly Off.
With the award of the the Phase I prizes, the Building Phase of GoFly is officially open. This is when teams get to test out designs, turn their ideas into reality, and begin their builds to make people fly! And remember: You don’t need to win a Phase I prize, or to have participated in Phase I, in order to participate and win in Phase II.
Additionally, as Teams begin the Phase II Building, GoFly is proud to support all our innovators every step of the way. To that end, GoFly has partnered with industry leaders to provide access to a myriad of incredibly valuable benefits throughout the entire competition. All Teams who participate in the Phase II Building Phase and who continue to remain active competitors will have access to hundreds of thousands of dollars in mentoring, software, products, services, media, and discounts, including but not limited to our GoFly In-Kind sponsor program. You can find more information on that program here.
All of these benefits are available to all Teams who complete the Phase II application and are officially accepted as a Phase II Team by GoFly. To become an official Phase II Team, innovators must complete the Phase II Agreements, which can be started by contacting with: 1) name, 2) team name, 3) list of team members, and 4) country. Registered teams gain access to these benefits in return for completing the Master Team Agreement documents and agreeing to provide GoFly with the opportunity to take a small equity stake in the resulting company. In the meantime, if you have not already done so, please be sure to sign the Interim Agreement, which allows you to keep working on your design while you prepare the Phase II documents.
We can’t wait to see what you all create!
Ready. Set. GoFly!
