GoAERO Purdue HEART (concept design)

(Image credit: GoAERO Purdue)

HEART (concept design)
GoAERO Purdue
VFS Purdue
Purdue University
West Lafayette, Indiana, USA
www.vfspurdue.com

VFS (Vertical Flight Systems) Purdue was founded in the fall of 2017 at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. VFS Purdue was created to participate Boeing’s GoFly competition. After completing Boeing's GoFly Phase 1 requirements, the team decided to step away from the competition and continue design and development of aircraft with the support of Purdue University and the Purdue chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). The team has grown to five subteams spanning majors including Aerospace Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Industrial Engineering and Business Management. The mission of the team is to design, build and test a single-user electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft for last mile transportation in the nascent advanced air mobility (AAM) industry.

Starting in 2024, the team began participating in Boeing's GoAERO competition. The GoAERO team lead is Siddarth Goel and the team members include Valentino Cattaneo, Xuli You, Rithik Kurup, Anamano Ikoh, Aditya Godbole, Jack Karson, Alexander Udrys, Caden Kuang, Cole Vernon, Kanishk Israni, Yash Kheni, Jiekun Wu, Zerong Huang (Jason), Shaofeng Yuan, and Jiaji Zhang, Thiago Guimarães, Woongkul Lee and Ran Dai. The team won the GoAERO Stage 1 award in 2025 and was one of 14 NASA University Innovation Award winners.

HEART passenger rescue eVTOL multicopter aircraft (concept design)
HEART (Human Emergency Aerial Rescue and Transport) is a one passenger rescue eVTOL multicopter aircraft. The aircraft has been designed for easy deployment and to be compact for storage. The team's desire is for these rescue multicopter aircraft to be located at every fire station, police station, hospital and other emergency rescue facilities such as the U.S. Coast Guard. The multicopter has been designed to be effective in both urban and rural areas during emergency situations.

While few specifications have been calculated by the team, the cruise speed can be estimated to be in the area of 45 mph (72 km/h) with an approximate maximum payload weight of ~250 lb (113 kg). The multicopter has eight stacked propellers, eight electric motors and is powered by battery packs. The battery packs have been made to easily swap out to allow rescue teams to have quick turnaround times when the batteries have become depleted. The passenger area is enclosed with opaque front and back fuselage walls and tinted side windows. The fuselage is made from aircraft grade aluminum alloy and carbon fiber composite material to give the aircraft a high strength to low weight ratio. The landing gear consists of a fixed quadricyle strut landing gear arrangement.

The Prototype
The team has made a subscale eVTOL multicopter prototype that has a maximum payload weight of just over 20 pounds (9 kg). Small flying prototypes are typically made to keep costs down yet allowing the inventors to determine what technologies are needed to make the aircraft work correctly and to validate the combined technologies with real world flight tests. Once multiple successful flight tests are made, this will allow the team to ultimately design and build a successful full-scale prototype.

About the GoAERO Prize Competition
The GoAERO Prize, sponsored by Boeing, is a three year competition (2024-2027) offering over $2 million USD in prizes that challenges engineers worldwide to create portable, versatile and autonomy-enabled Emergency Response Aircraft that address not only everyday medical emergencies but also to be used in natural disasters, humanitarian emergencies and climate crises worldwide. Each team designs and builds autonomous Emergency Response aircraft capable of delivering a first responder, medical equipment and supplies and ultimately evacuating victims in need to a rescue ambulance or hospital.

More than 150 teams from around the globe are competing for the GoAero prizes. The GoFly and GoAERO prizes were developed by Boeing and other organizations to help the nascent advanced air mobility (AAM) industry move forward.

Specifications:

• Aircraft type: Passenger rescue eVTOL multicopter (concept design)
• Piloting: Autonomous
• Capacity: 1 person
• Cruise speed: ~45 mph (72 km/h)
• Maximum payload weight: ~250 lb (113 kg)
• Propellers: 8 stacked propellers
• Electric motors: 8 electric motors
• Power source: Swappable battery packs
• Fuselage: Aircraft grade aluminum and composite fiber composite material
• Windows: Enclosed passenger compartment with large side windows
• Landing gear: Fixed quadricycle strut landing gear
• Safety features: Distributed Electric Propulsion (DEP) uses multiple propellers or electric ducted fans, each powered by electric motors, to increase safety through redundancy. If one or more components fail, the remaining ones can still ensure a safe landing. There are also redundancies of critical components in the sub-systems of the aircraft providing safety through redundancy. Having multiple redundant systems on any aircraft decreases having any single point of failure. The aircraft has no moving surfaces or tilting parts when transitioning from vertical to forward flight and the reverse which increases safety by reducing complexity.

Resources:

• VFS GoAero Purdue website
• Vertical Flight Systems Purdue website
• Purdue Vertical Flight Systems Instagram
• Vertical Flight Systems Purdue LinkedIn
• Article: GoAERO Launches $2M+ VTOL Challenge, Electric VTOL News, Feb. 12, 2024
• Article: Go Aero Prize - Aerial Emergency Response Operations, Purdue University, 2024
• Article: Stage 1 Winners, GoAero, Feb. 2025
• Article: GoAERO Announces Eleven Stage 1 Winners, Aero News Network, Feb. 16, 2025
• Article: GoAERO Global Emergency Response Flyer Competition Announces $500,000 of Awards to Innovators Worldwide with Support from Boeing, NASA, RTX, and Honeywell, GoAero, Feb. 18, 2025
• Article: GoAERO Awards $500,000 to Stage 1 Teams, Vertiflite Magazine, Mar/Apr 2025
• Article: Meet the Teams: GoAERO Purdue University, GoAERO, Apr. 10, 2025