Texas A&M University, Harmony Aeronautics, Quest (concept design)

(Image credit: Harmony Aeronautics )

Quest (concept design)
Harmony Aeronautics
Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas, USA
www.harmonyaeronautics.com
www.tamu.edu

Founded in 1876, Texas A&M University (Agricultural Mechanical College of Texas) is the first public higher education institution in Texas and is distinguished by offering more than 130 courses of studies, through 18 colleges and houses 21 research institutes. The main campus spans over 5,500 acres (22 km2). In 2024, the total student population has over 79,000 undergraduates, postgraduates and doctoral students, and has over 11,000 academic staff.

In June 2018, Harmony Aeronautics was formed by Prof. Moble Benedict, eight of his graduate students, plus Dr. Eric Greenwood and Dr. Vinod Lakshminarayan, in a collaborative effort to design an aircraft for entry into the GoFly competition. It is a Texas-based engineering service start-up with a team of engineers and scientists who are passionate about developing advanced aircraft concepts and rotor and propeller technology. The team brings years of experience in engineering research, analysis, simulation, and rotorcraft and aircraft prototype development and flight-testing. 

Quest passenger eVTOL concept design aircraft
The Quest is a one passenger eVTOL concept design aircraft. There are videos of a very small 12 lb (5.33 kg) subscale prototype flying but it is unknown if the university team will make the concept design with a working cockpit into a full-scale prototype.

Almost no specifications have been published online about this concept design aircraft. We do know the aircraft is planned to hold one pilot and there might be some space for a small amount of luggage. The aircraft will have four propellers, four electric motors and will be powered by batteries. The aircraft will have biplane wings (two main wings stacked one on top of the other) and is a tail-sitter aircraft using fixed skid landing gear to land the aircraft.

It is important to remember that all concept design aircraft specifications are estimated and can or will change as prototypes and production models are made, tested and flown with real world avionics, components and payloads.

Specifications:

• Aircraft type: Passenger eVTOL concept design aircraft
• Piloting: 1 pilot
• Cruise speed: Unknown
• Propellers: 4 propellers
• Electric motors: 4 electric motors
• Power source: Batteries
• Fuselage: Carbon fiber composite
• Window: Canopy over cockpit
• Wings: Wings: Biplane wings (two main wings stacked one above the other)
• Landing gear: Tail-sitter with fixed skid 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.

Related Aircraft:

• Texas A&M University Harmony (prototypes)

Company Insights:

• Crunchbase
• Tracxn
• Wikipedia

Resources:

• Harmony Aeronautics website
• Texas A&M University website
• Texas A&M University Facebook
• Texas A&M University Instagram
• Texas A&M University YouTube
• Texas A&M University X (formerly Twitter)
• Texas A&M University LinkedIn
• Texas A&M University Reddit
• GoFly Prize website
• Video: Quad-Biplane UAV, Moble Benedict, July 22, 2024