Student Hovers 8 Feet High in Human-Powered Helicopter, Smashing Previous Records

Wow this is pretty damn cool!

Records are made to be broken, and a bunch of students at the University of Maryland are smashing the ones they just set earlier this summer. They're so close to winning the crazy-hard American Helicopter Society's Igor I. Sikorsky Human-Powered Helicopter competition — watch an amazing eight-foot flight past the jump.

Henry Enerson, a freshman at UMD, is one of a handful of pilots taking turns furiously pedaling in the cockpit of the Gamera II, a human-powered quadcopter. The team has already met one major requirement of the Sikorsky Prize this week, hovering for 65 seconds. Now if they can hit one minute and get a little higher than 8 feet -- to exactly 3 meters, or 9.8 feet -- they'll win the $250,000 32-year-old prize.

Maybe one day, (allowing for developments in aerodynamics and dynamo motors) we can all comfortably peddle through the sky..

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edit on 26/10/2010 by TechUnique because: (no reason given)

The students just need to train HIIT until they can handle a full minute burst. That should give them their 1/4mil. Pretty cool!

S + F

this kinda stuff makes me just proud to be a human-
that vid put big smile on my face...so fliping cool WOW

i just hope its real

this truly is a fantastic story, thank you for posting it, i would love to have a
bikopter lol still some challenges to over come but i think they will surely
do it, they came this far already, it is good to know in spite of all the bad
there are still those working to innovate and move us forward.

i could see this catching on as a recreation sometime in the not too far
future, some small things that will have to be overcome to function as
a transportation device will be the ability to carry small loads, of
course safety features, the ability to move laterally and an awesome
paint job hmmmm these could, a long ways down the road maybe
replace hot air balloons as sky diving platforms maybe....

I think steering is gonna be the main problem. If you are peddling with arms and legs, you have no hands to control steering

wow

I'm not trying to be one of the 'everything-is-a-conspiracy' crowd, but this sure seems fake to me.

The blades have that CGI look to them and the helicopter starts to ascend before the blades have barely even made one full revolution?

Not to mention the pilot in mid-air looks like a Monty Python cut-out from my childhood.
And at 00:53, the girl seems to run through the whole frame while the camera is shaking?

I dunno, i just don't get that legit feeling from it.
If I'm really bored later I'll try and work out approximately how fast those blades need to be spinning to equalise with the gravitational vector, before it even begins to generate any upwards thrust. But let's just say at the moment this doesn't really seem right.

If I'm able to accomplish CGI this well, I don't doubt anyone else can (but it sure seems like they forgot to emulate the physics correctly).

Especially seeing as there is a potential for more funding, and $250,000 at stake?

Wow. For the life of me, I can't think of any practical applications, but that doesn't mean there aren't dozens. Just as a show of what our species is capable of, it's absolutely amazing. Certainly some brilliant young minds worked on this thing. Love it. Huzzah for humanity.

Originally posted by adrift
The blades have that CGI look to them and the helicopter starts to ascend before the blades have barely even made one full revolution?

Not to mention the pilot in mid-air looks like a Monty Python cut-out from my childhood.
And at 00:53, the girl seems to run through the whole frame while the camera is shaking?

I dunno, i just don't get that legit feeling from it.