TOHL, an innovative young startup composed of Georgia Tech grads, recently launched a campaign on the online funding platform kickstarter.com. The goal was to raise $30,000 in order to conduct a full-scale test of their "new, inventive and sustainable way to do pipelines," and as of yesterday, the team had crossed the finish line with a total of 127 pledges and $30,018.

Last spring, TOHL participated in the Ideas to Serve Competition, a forum for Georgia Tech students who have innovative ideas for solving society's most pressing problems. Their entry outlined a plan to deploy mobile tubing via helicopter in order to provide fluid transport into remote regions following natural disasters. The team won third place in the I2S competition and went on to receive funding from Startup Chile. Since then, they have been working in South America,  developing a working prototype of their system and earlier this year, they conducted their first live test of concept. The live test was successful: working in a mountainous region of rural Chile, the helicopter system was able to successfully install a 1km pipeline in less than 9 minutes, demonstrating its ability quickly provide fluids to remote areas in an “on-demand” manner.

Following their first successful live test, TOHL was featured in prominent news outlets such as Forbes, CNN, Wired, and inc. magazine. The company plans to conduct a full-scale test in the near future.