Behold, the Human-Powered Helicopter of 2012 ! OMG!

What if you had this as a toy in a open field of space! Now stick a engine to automatically work it for you and just sit & relax as you fly around the world!! ahahhah




A team of engineers at the University of Maryland has come close to winning the Sikorsky Prize, a $250,000 grant awarded to any group that can build a human-powered helicopter — with a few stipulations, of course. To earn the prize, first introduced by the American Helicopter Society (AHS) in 1980, the machine must be able to hover for a full minute and reach a height of 3 meters within a 10-meter by 10-meter box. All powered by nothing more than human muscles. Read more

That... is awesome.
It looks so unreal.

I wonder how much math went into building that thing. Engineers truly are some of the smartest people out there.

reply to post by FeelingPure

What if you had this as a toy in a open field of space! Now stick a engine to automatically work it for you and just sit & relax as you fly around the world!!

If you stick an engine to this it wouldn't be able to fly, the engine is to heavy.

So bad idea

reply to post by Mianeye


True, Unless we change that guy for a skinny midget

Pretty impressive...Of course not very practical...however, can somebody answer me this question.

As thrust is used to push air under and against the area of a wing or rota blade to generate lift. And the greater the thrust the greater the lift...but also as seen in the video... with a lot lower thrust you can still achieve lift as long as you have a much larger area of wing or rota. In other words its an equation that states more thrust plus less area and less thrust plus more area.

The obvious problem using less thrust..like human power...is that you have an impractically large and flimsy vehicle. So as the equation states that wing area is the real issue..then why not have a stack of rotas,

If you could make a stack of rotas, but building them with a very small space between each one, it should equate to much greater area, but used over a much smaller diameter making the machine much smaller and more practical.

Has anyone considered this? I have seen early helicopter designs using stacked rota blades...but what Im suggesting is using carbon fiber..or something similarly strong and light weight.. to make much lighter stacks, with many more blades in them...so perhaps 10 blades but stacked in a meter of space.

Would this work?

Oldish news, this was in 31st August this year when a video came out announcing it...

reply to post by scotsdavy1


We KNOW! I am just sharing it with the ATS Community for the people that missed this news, Also this has not been shared on ATS Before.

Oh, didn't know, no problems...

This is me when i saw the thread >:

This is me when i saw the you tube link >



I get sucked into soo many of those :/ and end up disappointed because i cant watch YouTube link(in my current place, which lasts 8 hrs >.>).

What a great challenge to tackle. Hey, it ain't easy making a helicopter fly:

Originally posted by The GUT
What a great challenge to tackle. Hey, it ain't easy making a helicopter fly:

lmao thanks for the share, We looked so stupid back during them times if we compare to our time now

ahaha love it!