Taking the Road Less Traveled to Provide Relief

The common complaints against autonomous vehicles designed to provide first aid relief to disaster victims are that they are either too expensive or inefficient. ASCEND wants to change that. 

Founded by University of Texas professor Christian Claudel, ASCEND, or Aerial Solutions for Combating Emergencies and Natural Disasters, started in spring 2024 as a research group. Claudel said his goal was to build a high payload-bearing, flight-capable, autonomous ATV without breaking the bank. The group told the Chronicle that the drones currently dominating the market can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and, even then, have trouble shouldering large supply shipments.

In Claudel’s vision, the vehicle’s all-terrain ground capabilities could be used along with its flight capacity to access otherwise inaccessible paths to victims in the aftermath of natural disasters. When main roads become unavailable after floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, or wildfires, ASCEND’s goal is for their vehicle – which they named JH-2 as a nod to migrant farmer turned NASA astronaut José Hernández – to possess GPS tracking to locate areas in need of assistance and take to the sky or traverse inhospitable terrain to deliver aid. 

Leaning on his background in environmental engineering, Claudel now leads a team of around 20 students each semester, focused on the completion of JH-2. Inspiration for the project originally came from GoAero, a three-year multiphased international competition between teams of students racing to build the best lifesaving aircraft. Stages one and two, which wrapped in December 2024 and September 2025, respectively, acted as progress benchmarks and gave teams the opportunity to vie for prize money to fund their years-long projects. 

After becoming one of just 22 stage one winners out of hundreds of applicants alongside another UT group partnered with Lift Aircraft, JH-2 was not ready to compete in the second stage by the deadline. Nevertheless, ASCEND’s prototype testing is still in full swing as they prepare to submit a video demonstrating their invention’s ability to carry a full-weight payload in an outdoor flight at least 300 feet off the ground for GoAero’s final Fly-Off competition. If the group’s video is deemed successful by judges, the group will head to NASA’s Ames Research Center for an in-person demonstration, the culmination of the competition and a chance to earn major prize money that will fund the group’s future projects.

The team is cautiously optimistic that their design will advance in the GoAero competition; however, they are strategizing potential avenues in case they do not make it to the final Fly-Off competition. Claudel said that the group may develop the system for other demanding emergency scenarios such as fire control, though funding sources still remain in question.

Hassan Iqbal, a postdoctoral student who has worked with Claudel since ASCEND began, called the project “hands down” the most difficult challenge he’s faced in over a decade studying in the field. “The reason this technology has not been developed so far is because it is a very hard, technical challenge,” Iqbal said.

Claudel said the main challenge, in addition to budget constraints, stems from JH-2’s flight mechanism. Unlike its stiff-winged drone alternatives, ASCEND’s rugged four-wheeler uses a parachute-like adaptation called a parafoil to fly. Though much cheaper to produce and sell than the alternatives – their target sale price is $20,000 – the technology makes controlling the vehicle near impossible.

“A lot of companies have tried to work on these parafoil drones in the past,” Claudel said. “But all of them have failed.” 

Iqbal, who immigrated to the United States from Pakistan in 2019, experienced the repercussions of natural disaster firsthand in his home country. As an undergrad, he worked on a startup that aimed to address pollution in Pakistan, where widespread water quality issues come in part from extreme flooding. 

UT research group ASCEND’s emergency response ATV Credit: ASCEND

As natural disaster numbers mount, especially in the Global South, the need for durable low-cost solutions grows more pronounced. “These are the challenges of the next century,” Iqbal said. “Engineering sits at the center.”

In search of an unprecedented solution to a complex problem, Claudel said he needed a group of engineers with a range of skills and the ability to think outside the box. He found them by accident. After one of the members of his research team gave a presentation to UT’s chapter of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, the applications started trickling in. Two and a half years later, ASCEND, now an official student organization, consists mostly of first-generation Hispanic students. 

Jorge Urdaneta, whose family fled Venezuela in 2017 under threat of political persecution, joined to work with his best friend from SHPE. “They’ve been overcoming difficulties since they were born,” Urdaneta said of his partners. “So they have a lot of resilience.” 

According to Claudel, the team, though somewhat inexperienced, consists of engineers with a unique collection of skills that go beyond what they’ve learned in the classroom. He’s seen students adept at welding and assembling make a big difference. 

And beyond their backgrounds, members of ASCEND share a desire to simply promote positive change in the world around them. 

“When I was looking into school … I didn’t care about what career I was going for,” Urdaneta said. “I just wanted to make a change in the world, give back to the community. Helping with emergency relief is a way of doing that.”

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