US University Innovation Award Winner

Zachary Conti’s father is an emergency medicine physician who also served as an emergency medical technician in a mobile helicopter ambulance unit. So, Zach’s first professional aspirations centered on following in his dad’s footsteps in medicine. But those footsteps eventually veered toward aerospace engineering.

Nathan Mercier’s father is also a doctor, at SSM Health in St. Louis. And like Zach, Nate was inspired by what his dad did for a living and thought he’d follow the same journey. But he, too, fell in love with aerospace engineering.

So did Chuka Okeke, whose mom is a hospital nurse. Her stories about the patient care she provided served as the inspiration and impetus for his initial decision to become a doctor–until his passion for aerospace engineering intervened.

But as the saying goes, the “apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”  Zach, Nate, and Chuka are all seniors at Saint Louis University, where they are combining their love of aerospace engineering with a commitment to help save lives just as their parents do. 

This commitment is manifested in their participation, alongside four other SLU students on the AirCRAFT Lab Team in GoAERO, the global challenge to develop an entirely new class of emergency response vehicles – flyers that are more effective, efficient, and accessible than helicopters, drones, or air ambulances during extreme weather catastrophes, natural and man-made disasters, and medical emergencies.

In times of disaster, efficient emergency response can mean the difference between life and death, stresses Dr. Srikanth Gururajan, the AirCRAFT Lab director and team captain. Too often, he says, ambulances and other first response vehicles are obstructed by gridlocked traffic, damaged roads, or impassable landscapes. 

“What if there was a solution that could break through these barriers?” he posits. “Our flyer will enable emergency response personnel to overcome bottlenecks in delivering much needed supplies and, more importantly, triage support at the frontline.”

Echoing this sentiment, team member Mia Arndt relates that, “when GoAERO was first presented to us, it sounded interesting and worthy of our participation. Lately, though, there have been so many reminders of why this is so important – the wildfires in Los Angeles, the hurricanes and tornadoes across the country, and more. We need to be engaged because what we are striving to do is so impactful.”

Their hard work is already being recognized. The AirCRAFT Lab team is one of 14 awardees receiving funds from GoAERO with support from NASA’s University Innovation Project.

“Winning this prize is a tremendous shot in the arm for our team, and a validation of our design concept and efforts,” exclaims Zach, the team’s VR lead. “The money will dramatically aid in prototyping, testing and validating our design. From all our prior experience, we are well aware that flight test validation of a new UAS (unmanned aerial system) concept carries a huge risk of loss, and these funds will mitigate any setbacks we may encounter during this next phase.”

AirCRAFT Lab’s flyer is appropriately called CARE: a Critical Action Rescue Extraction drone. The design features a tandem wing, hybrid VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) configuration, with fully autonomous flight capabilities to address the challenges laid out by GoAERO, particularly the complexity of the Maneuvering, Adversity, and Autonomy missions in the challenge’s Final Fly-Off.

The CARE flyer is designed to be modular, with ease of assembly and transportation being the primary driving factors. It is expected to be operated by a small crew of two or three operators who would be able to assemble the flyer for flight-ready condition in as little as 30 minutes from the moment of arrival at the staging area of the emergency at hand. 

Additionally, the UAS will be fabricated using lightweight, high-strength composite materials (carbon fiber, aluminum honeycombs, etc.) to keep the overall weight low. 

It will also feature two independent sets of propulsion – a set of eight electric motors for Vertical Take Off and Landing and a wet fuel (gas) engine for translational motion. 

Additionally, because a human passenger is not expected to be trained to fly the vehicle, it incorporates significant onboard and offboard autonomy, based on Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning techniques applied to flight control.

Dr. Gururajan explains that to build such a vehicle, he handpicked the team members, all seniors, from about 40 students. 

“I always keep an eye out for students who are not only capable of doing things but who push themselves to go beyond any boundaries that have been set, and who can do a lot more than what they are doing in the classroom,” he says. “GoAERO is the perfect avenue for them to demonstrate this. It’s ideally suited for each member’s abilities and commitment. And it seamlessly blends the technological skills we learn in our courses with the ethical compass we are taught at Saint Louis University.”

JP Lacroix, the propulsion/VTOL lead who is also a certified ultralight aircraft pilot, describes CARE’s hybrid propulsion system: “While an electric motor is faster in terms of response time and much easier to control for take-off and landing, batteries are heavy so using them to propel our drone forward is not feasible.”

Further, “gas is more energy dense and better for long-range flying and for long endurance missions,” explains Will Jameson, the team’s CAD/design/modeling/structures lead. “And if we have to lighten the payload during a mission, it is easier to take away weight by getting rid of fuel.”

Mia, the project/flight testing/systems integration lead, agrees, adding that electric vertical take-off and landing has another benefit:  “During emergency response, we may be faced with small and confined spaces in which to operate. Having to rely solely on gas-powered forward propulsion would greatly limit us.”

JP echoes this sentiment, noting that he has several family members who are avid mountain hikers. “I know that can be dangerous and there are always accidents, so it is important that our flyer can respond quickly and go where ambulances would never be able to reach.”

It is this humanitarian impact that drew the modeling and simulation lead Ian Roudebush to GoAERO. He explains that when people first hear about aerospace engineering, they may have negative views because it conjures up the military and the defense industry. “But what we’re doing with GoAERO has a very positive impact. It is about saving lives. And that changes people’s perceptions about aerospace engineering, not to mention my own outlook on my degree. It brings to light exactly what I can do when I graduate.”

Nathan, the autonomy, avionics, stability, and flight controls lead, concurs. GoAERO, he says, opens a world of possibilities for the aerospace engineering industry – “all of which are positive. It is easy for anyone to see how we are impacting society in a positive way.”

Perhaps Chuka, the aerodynamics lead, says it best: “I know how happy it makes me to participate in something that is a real-life example of what I’ve learned in the classroom and in our lab over the past four years. Plus, it brings together both halves of my life – the aerospace engineering side and the medical side, what my mom has been doing for years, saving lives.”

 

To highlight your GoAERO Team, contact us at info@goaeroprize.com. 

 

REMINDER: Stage 2 Registration Documents are available here.

Benefits for Teams can be found here.