Boeing will pay you $2 million if you can build a human-carrying drone or jetpack
Know how to build a human-carrying drone or jetpack? Boeing will pay you $2 million to make it happen.
Boeing is the primary sponsor in GoFly, a two-year, international contest to build a “personal flying device” capable of Vertical Takeoff and Landing that can fly twenty miles and carry a person.
In other words: a drone or a jetpack.
“What we are seeking is an “everyone” personal flying device, capable of being flown by ANYONE, ANYWHERE. It should be a device for ALL: young and old, city-dweller and country-dweller, expert and novice,” according to the rules.
The good news, is you don’t actually have to build it at the start. The GoFly Prize Competition will award up to ten $20,000 prizes awarded based on a written report. From there, contestants will move onto Phase II, and ultimately to phase III. Judges include a team of experts from Boeing.
There’s a $1 million overall award, as well as various awards for quietest, smallest, and “disruptive advancement of the state of the art.”
Human-carrying drones have not yet been met with mainstream success. Dubai’s transportation agency chief promised that human-ferrying drones would begin transporting people across the city in July of 2017, though that still has not happened on a wide scale.
Research site YouGov conducted a study of American adults and found that only 1 in 20 people said they would feel safe riding in a passenger drone.
The registration deadline for Phase I of Boeing’s GoFly competition is April 4, 2018. The final fly-off is expected to occur sometime in October 2019.
Sorry I didn’t meet that requirement by some negative 25 years. Original design was vey complicated. Now it’s a matter of structure and styling. Keeping the original name. My Manta Class Helicraft could be your solution.
It is scaleable and looks awesome.
I have your backpack airplane design. Take off feet on the ground, fly about 150, land back on your feet. Had to design the engine for it. Since you can take off from a standstill it qualifies as a jet pack. I guess you could use it as one if you didn’t want to actually fly