9 ms·

Human-Powered Helicopter Wins the $250,000 Sikorsky Prize

601 points by comatose_kid 13y ago

msandford 13y ago
It was only a matter of time until the materials got good enough for this to happen. I'm always surprised that these teams never seemed to try and recruit pro athletes for this kind of thing. I've got a friend who's a professional cyclist and his 30 second power rating is something like 1100 watts and I'm sure at a minute it's only degraded by 50-100 watts.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- yurisagalov 13y ago
  Todd actually holds a record for cycling (The Collegiate Land Record -- 116.9km/h). So I think he might qualify as a professional cyclist :)
  - msandford 13y ago
    Haha whoops!
  - scott_s 13y ago
    I was surprised at the parent comment - this guy definitely looks like a serious cyclist.
    - themstheones 13y ago
      Certainly doesn't look like a grandma out on her omafiets. He has thighs like tree trunks.
    - Demiurge 13y ago
      hehe, when I saw his leg muscles, I immediately thought, 'Not fair!!!'
- fuzionmonkey 13y ago
  From what I remember, pro cyclists are simply too expensive. It's better to have an amateur who is 80-90% as good as a real pro, but is genuinely interested in the project and would be more dedicated than a hired pro.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Genuine question: what are pro-cyclists generally spending their time doing? Are they in races or ramping up / recovering from races all year? If they have downtime I don't see why you couldn't find a pro that is genuinely interested in what you're doing.
    - JackGibbs 13y ago
      Most top tier pro cyclists clock 25000-35000 miles a year on their bikes, and race 80-140 days a year. Other than that, the job is mainly sitting around recovering. Although cycling is an incredibly complex sport, on the level of gridiron football or basketball in terms of the number of calculations that have to be made as part of tactical decisions, the longer-term playout of actions (at least in long road races) means that riders and their sporting directors (think coaches) have time to think about their decisions, and that combined with how much of racing is done on feel means there isn't the same need for things like film study and in-depth tactical coaching on a daily basis.
    - notatoad 13y ago
      Athletes have a lot of what might be called downtime in their schedule, but very little actual free time. downtime is a part of training, a good nap schedule and staying well rested between training sessions and races is very important. You can't just go off and pedal a helicopter because you've got a couple hours free.
  - msandford 13y ago
    It seems it would be possible to get a pro to work on the project pro bono provided you picked the right guy. I was assuming the projects would go that route. Any reasonably intelligent pro cyclist would love to be the guy who set a world record like that, it's a similar achievement to the Gossamer Albatross. But that's a very good point you've made. I obviously didn't even factor in price.
- curveship 13y ago
  Bit of cycling geekery: if he can do 1100 watts for 30 seconds, he's probably around about 750-800 watts for 60 seconds. Power declines approximately with the inverse of time until it flattens out at your long-term sustainable power. A pro is probably somewhere in the 350 watts range of sustainable power, so doubling the duration would mean his power above the sustainable rate would be halved, putting his estimated 60 second power at 725 watts. In this particular range of power, the approximation tends to be a little low, so fudging upwards a bit puts him around 750-800 watts.
  - JackGibbs 13y ago
    Those pro numbers are a little low. Although La Gazzetta's watt calculations have been somewhat questionable in the past, Tony Martin's wattage was given as 480 for the Mont Saint Michel TT on Tuesday. Shane Perkins, and Aussie track rider who is probably the strongest cyclist in the world in terms of pure brute strength, has a maximum output of 2500 watts (my guess is that is a ten second effort, they don't give it, but his 60 second effort is certainly higher than 1100 watts). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8H6fU9VNgQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8H6fU9VNgQ
    - curveship 13y ago
      An average pro (domestic and international) vs. the pro who just won a worldclass TT. An average weight pro vs. a big boy like Tony Martin or even more so Shane Perkins. I've seen quite a few pro wattage files, and 350 is fairly common for an average pro. The more reliable measure is w/kg. Pros tend to range anywhere from high 4s (low-level sprinters or rouleurs) to mid 6s (world class TT'ers or climbers), with most being somewhere in the 5s. If la gazzetta's numbers are right, and if we believe Tony Martin's posted weight of 75kg, his 480 watts puts him at 6.4 w/kg.
      - JackGibbs 13y ago
        I wasn't exactly thinking of Optum or Kenda, I was thinking of a Pro/WorldTour level rider. The numbers you mention are frightening close to these I found for Brian Vandborg: http://home.trainingpeaks.com/races/saxo-bank-sungard/2011-usa-pro-cycling-challenge/prologue.aspx http://home.trainingpeaks.com/races/saxo-bank-sungard/2011-u... - not exactly known as a powerhouse (there he is finish 47 seconds down over a 8km TT, and here he is barely beating Chris Anker Sorenson in a 40km time trial a few months before those figures: http://cqranking.com/men/asp/gen/race.asp?raceid=20722 http://cqranking.com/men/asp/gen/race.asp?raceid=20722). Sure, Domencio Pozzovizzio isn't putting out 400 watts sustained (he probably isn't putting out 300), but my feeling is that Siutsou, Chavanel, Tuft, Vanmarcke, Vaitkus, Malori and other riders of their ilk are creeping up towards the 375-400 range sustained. Don't get me wrong, I'm nitpicking here, I was just noting those numbers feel slightly low.
- awongh 13y ago
  this is surprising that they don't try to get world class cyclists. I'd like to point out the distinction from professionally paid road racers and olympic-level track (velodrome) riders. Road riders are always travelling, generally pretty busy and would probably be hard to get for a project like this, but more to the point, don't train for this kind of maximal wattage output. But in fact, the world record for the 1km time trial is right below 1 minute right now (58.875).... I read somewhere on the internet that world class kilo riders are doing <900 avg. watts to do a kilo. Not to mention the fact that these guys aren't really bothered by much outside an olympic year. otoh, canada doesn't have any of these caliber of riders, afaik.
  - stan_rogers 13y ago
    We have had, including Curt Harnett, Jocelyn Lovell and (on the female side of things) Clara Hughes. The "thunderthighs" crowd does tend towards speed skating, though, which tends to be more accessible in a large country with few velodromes.
michael_miller 13y ago
To me, this is really cool, since presumably it means the materials have gotten light enough for an electric helicopter to become a reality (beyond the crappy Firefly project). Imagine what it would be like if you could commute from the suburbs of NY to the downtown heliport without paying for fuel or expensive maintenance. It could transform the way people commute to work, eliminating traffic and the effect of accidents.
- pavel_lishin 13y ago
  > It could transform the way people commute to work, eliminating traffic and the effect of accidents. Hopefully, the same people who are causing the accidents in cars won't be able to directly control the helicopter. A car wreck slowing traffic down to 10% on a freeway is preferable to death looming from the sky because someone really needs to check twitter right now.
  - ChuckMcM 13y ago
    This is the ultimate reason for not having flying vehicles. You lose one and it's injury and death all the way down. That said, gyro-copters have excellent fail safe properties (then can autorotate/glide to a landing without power) when controlled by someone, or something, committed to operating them safely.
    - starpilot 13y ago
      The FAA requires that all helicopters be capable of autorotation. We actually design and test for this extensively, by adding mass to the blade tips to store inertia, pilots regularly practicing power-off flight etc. Autogyros fly in constant autorotation (hence the name), the main rotor being unpowered.
  - glhaynes 13y ago
    I'd wager that on the evolutionary path to personal aircraft, the development of self-driving cars is as necessary a step as the development of manually-driven cars and manually-piloted aircraft. Or to say it a different way: there'll never be widespread manually-piloted consumer aircraft.
rdl 13y ago
Is there a good overview of materials improvements over, say, the past 150 years? It seems like one of the areas, along with IT and biotech, which has had huge gains even in the past 20 years, contrary to the "end of innovation" thesis of Thiel et al. You can get carbon fiber in everything now, ceramics are more used in things other than pottery, and companies like Crucible made a lot of awesome steels (including...cast stainless steels!) from the 1970s to now. Sure, the properties don't get 10x better, but a 1% improvement in strength-at-2000C for the blades makes a jet turbine a lot more efficient.
- cdwhite 13y ago
  A standard intro materials science textbook wouldn't tell you exactly what you're looking for, but it would give you an idea of what the state of the art is and where different materials are used and also a little bit of potted history. I read Askeland, Fulay, and Wright's /The Science and Engineering of Materials/ a couple of months ago; it seemed like a mediocre book, but the material covered was fascinating (and reasonably clearly presented.)
- durkie 13y ago
  (i'm a material scientist by training and by trade (up till a month ago)) to me, the history of materials improvements is the history of materials characterization techniques. so much of materials science is just trying to figure out the right lever to pull to control some property, and modern tools like electron microscopy, tga/dsc, xps, afm, bet, etc. all provide amazing insight that was simply unavailable 150 years ago. but also, 150 years is a really long time frame. people were only just beginning to study material fatigue in the mid 1800s.
iandanforth 13y ago
For much more detail on the design I recommend the Draft FAI World Record Claim they are submitting. (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5093348/Draft%20Atlas%20World%20Record%20Claim.zip https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5093348/Draft%20Atlas%20...) Interesting tidbit: "The pedaling of the pilot pulls on and reels in four Vectran cords, which are pre-spooled onto each of the four rotor hubs. The action of unspooling the cord and pulling on the rotor hub drives each rotor to overcome the drag force."
- pge 13y ago
  thanks for the link - I saw the big spools in the video and was trying to figure out what was going on. I presume that means that flight time is limited by cord length (rather than having a circulating loop like a bike chain)?
  - samstave 13y ago
    It would be interesting if they could get a version with six blades where (3) are required to provide lift and it oscillates between spooling/unspooling three of the six at a time such that you fly with 3 whilst spooling the other three - then "shift" between spools.
    - chockablock 13y ago
      I like it: a 'pull-only' transmission system to take advantage of the tensile strength of lightweight materials.
- curveship 13y ago
  Thanks for the link! Lots of interesting info: Empty Weight: 55.1 kg All-Up Weight: 130.1 kg Flight Power (0.5 m): 450 W Flight Power (3 m): 750 W I wonder if those wattage numbers are estimates or measurements.
  - curveship 13y ago
    Replying to self, as I just noticed (awesome!) they included a power chart for the record flight. About 1kw for the first 12 secs, then settling down to 600w for most of remainder. That's a boss ride, especially for a 70kg rider. Dude's a monster.
peteretep 13y ago
I wonder if this will be like the four minute mile ... now it's been achieved a little, people will smash it, and my helicopter is on its way soon...
- pmahoney 13y ago
  The claim that a 4-minute mile was once thought to be impossible by informed observers was and is a widely propagated myth created by sportswriters and debunked by Bannister himself in his memoir, The Four Minute Mile (1955). The reason the myth took hold was that four minutes was a nice round number which was slightly better (1.4 seconds) than the world record for nine years, longer than it probably otherwise would have been because of the effect of World War II in interrupting athletic progress in the combatant countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bannister https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bannister
- marvin 13y ago
  I would be willing to bet that this will never make its way into a consumer product or even a hardcore hobbyist product. Even human-powered winged flight is on the borders of what is anatomically and physically possible, and helicopters are even farther out on the feasibility scale. It's cool for a proof of concept, but you won't be able to improve this design by an order of magnitude even with weightless materials.
  - bigiain 13y ago
    True, but my ~$120 quadcopter has about 80% of the power this thing needs to climb to 3m. There are people out there building human carrying scaled-up hobby quadcopters (well, hexa or duodec or hexadec copters). I suspect there are (other) people out there now thinking things along the lines on "Hmmm, made from balsa and foam covered in poly film, prepreg carbon tube, kevlar tow, epoxy and cyano. All pretty common high-end but regularly homebuilt model plane techniques. 10m long rotor blades are big - but only 2 or 3 times longer than pretty common competition rc glider wings. There's a very reasonable chance that the right group of comp rc glider builders and quad rotor hobbyists could build something that weighs maybe only twice what this does, and has 5 or 10 times as much power available - probably for a budget of not much more that $10k." I don't think "hardcore hobbyists" will be pedaling one of these anytime soon, but flying something similar electrically is certainly not an impossibility.
methehack 13y ago
Awesome! It's inspirational to see people attempt something they're not sure they can do, work hard for a good while, and finally do it. Just what I needed to start the afternoon!
sadfaceunread 13y ago
Pretty cool result. I'd wonder what the performance would be with ~150 lb of batteries, motors and electronic sensors/controllers instead of a human. I wonder if given the same mechanics of this system a human is the optimal motor just because of the built-in automation and control system (probably not).
makmanalp 13y ago
Wow, I love that the blades seem to be spinning so slow, yet it all works. Exciting times to be a human.
incision 13y ago
Interesting that Aerovelo won this. As I recall, they were the only contender not using electronic assists which were set to become invalid this month: 'With the pilot using both hands and feet to power the aircraft, UMD faced a challenge developing a control system for the Gamera II. But an attempt to clarify the rule prohibiting energy-storage devices inadvertently opened the door to electronic controls being used on both the Gamera II and Upturn II. AHS has closed the loophole, but both teams have until July to attempt winning the prize under previous rules.[0] 0: http://www.aviationweek.com/Article/PrintArticle.aspx?id=/article-xml/AW_03_04_2013_p68-553183.xml&p=1&printView=true http://www.aviationweek.com/Article/PrintArticle.aspx?id=/ar...
oh_teh_meows 13y ago
It is possible, perhaps through a clever arrangement of gears and what not, to create a human powered copter that can create sufficient lift with just one rotor?
- starpilot 13y ago
  Probably, but you'd need a tailrotor or tip props on the blade tips for countertorque. There was an unsuccessful HPH design with one tip-driven rotor. The negative is that you're generating aerodynamic force that is non-lifting, and thus wasting power. Four rotors were probably chosen for this design (and many past others) for stability; a helicopter in hover is about as stable as an air hockey puck, it needs constant control input to stay in one spot. Directional control is much easier with a vehicle resting on four legs than on one.
- b_emery 13y ago
  Interesting question. Seems like they have a lot of weight in the superstructure that would be removed with a single blade (and tail rotor).
  - starpilot 13y ago
    You lose weight in the external structure, but you'd gain some back in stiffening the blades to prevent excessive blade deflection (you'd have one big rotor instead of four small ones). You could also stiffen with external tension cables, but these rotate with the blades and would incur drag (streamlined wires were invented for this reason, also bicycle wheel disk covers) and disturb the axial flow. It's all about tradeoffs. - former HPH member
ChuckMcM 13y ago
The shape of things to come I suspect. While folks talk about blimps and what not there is value to having "permanent" points of presence in the air above, be it a communications node, surveillance node, or early warning theatre defence. 'Human powered' is a good predictor of 'solar powered' since the total energy extractable from humans per pound payload is lower than solar. Thus if you're doing the calculus for keeping something up 24x7, this is a good indication you are close.
- scoot 13y ago
  >the total energy extractable from humans per pound load is lower than solar Whilst that may be true, don't forget that the energy output is in kinetic form, so for comparison you'd need to factor in the weight of motors, and for a "permanent" presence, some form of energy storage for night time use (and batteries are far from light!)
  - ChuckMcM 13y ago
    Yup, now do the math. 1 sq meter of monocrystalline cells (approximately 2kg) deriving about 166W/hr over a 6 hr solar "day" (1000 W.hrs) stored in LiFePo batteries (about 1kG/100 W.hrs) so 10kg of betteries, with .5 kg of electronics (battery charger) and wires, delivered over 24hrs or 12.5kg/41watts continuous. Human athelete lets call it 165 lbs, so 75kg, or 6 * 12.5 or 246 continuous watts over a 24hr period, or a total of just over 5.9Kwh per 24hr period. So basically anything a human can power, an equivalent mass of solar power infrastructure can power. The interesting bit is of course that you can use it all at once (like a human sprint) or spread it out over time. It will have more surface area however which often limits the ability to just swap solar cells for other forms of power.
    - HNJohnC 13y ago
      What about the weight of the motors?
      - ChuckMcM 13y ago
jtchang 13y ago
Nothing short of astounding. Some people didn't think it could be done. And now we have something that truly proves it. What's next? Lighter materials? I'd love to play around with something like this and not have to be a world class cyclist.
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  I want to be able to commute to work with it!
- jrblast 13y ago
  For "What's next?" I would hope for something smaller. Impressive as this is, it's way to big to be practical. I suppose lighter materials could help reduce the size though.
psb 13y ago
Is cycling the most efficient way to extract power from human muscles? I would guess something like deadlift/rowing motion to be better
- pge 13y ago
  for sustained power output of any duration, pedaling a fixed gear crank is about as good as it gets for getting power out of a human body. See Bicycling Science by David Wilson, MIT Press, for some interesting quantitative analysis. As an example to address your specific suggestion of rowing, compare a rowing scull with the Decavitator (MIT built pedal powered boat). Edit: Corrected typo noted below - "skull" to "scull" - oops.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 13y ago
    You should probably correct "skull" to "scull." Reading "rowing skull" then immediately mis-reading "Decavitator" as "Decapitator" was an interesting WTF?!? on my part ;-)
  - Someone 13y ago
    The huge speed difference with a single scull probably has more to do with inefficiencies in 'the drive train' (moving your weight around in a rowing shell introduces dipping, which loses energy; using oars is less efficient than using a propeller) than with inefficiencies of the rowing motion vs a cycling motion. http://rowingbike.com/site/EN/ http://rowingbike.com/site/EN/ shows a bike operated using a rowing motion. That machine is competitive with 'normal' recumbent bikes, except in climbs. The main parts also could be fitted on that Decavitator. I would expect similar speeds.
    - pge 13y ago
      Interesting point - it may be that rowing is comparable to biking in power, but the ease of building a cycling drivetrain generally wins out for projects like this, because the parts are readily available in any bike store (the cockpit of the copter here is an off-the-shelf bike frame and crankset attached to the spools).
WestCoastJustin 13y ago
Here is the official release [1], their homepage also have a great video of what looks like the successful run [2]. As one of the people that donated to the Kickstarter this make me very happy! [1] http://www.aerovelo.com/2013/07/11/aerovelo-officially-awarded-ahs-sikorsky-prize/ http://www.aerovelo.com/2013/07/11/aerovelo-officially-award... [2] http://www.aerovelo.com/ http://www.aerovelo.com/
thetwiceler 13y ago
This is really cool! On a similar note, for those of you who may not be aware, there has also been a human-powered airplane: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Albatross http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Albatross I am totally amazed by the Gossamer Albatross. It was made in 1979. And here's the most awesome part - a cyclist flew it across the English Channel!
techboots 13y ago
Way cooler than some app redone with better UI. Hopefully, this sort of stuff is the future.
farinasa 13y ago
This doesn't actually seem to be a helicopter. It looks like a multicopter. There is a significant function and theoretical difference.

601 points by comatose_kid 13y ago

It was only a matter of time until the materials got good enough for this to happen. I'm always surprised that these teams never seemed to try and recruit pro athletes for this kind of thing. I've got a friend who's a professional cyclist and his 30 second power rating is something like 1100 watts and I'm sure at a minute it's only degraded by 50-100 watts.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
yurisagalov 13y ago
Todd actually holds a record for cycling (The Collegiate Land Record -- 116.9km/h). So I think he might qualify as a professional cyclist :)
- msandford 13y ago
  Haha whoops!
- scott_s 13y ago
  I was surprised at the parent comment - this guy definitely looks like a serious cyclist.
  - themstheones 13y ago
    Certainly doesn't look like a grandma out on her omafiets. He has thighs like tree trunks.
  - Demiurge 13y ago
    hehe, when I saw his leg muscles, I immediately thought, 'Not fair!!!'
fuzionmonkey 13y ago
From what I remember, pro cyclists are simply too expensive. It's better to have an amateur who is 80-90% as good as a real pro, but is genuinely interested in the project and would be more dedicated than a hired pro.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Genuine question: what are pro-cyclists generally spending their time doing? Are they in races or ramping up / recovering from races all year? If they have downtime I don't see why you couldn't find a pro that is genuinely interested in what you're doing.
  - JackGibbs 13y ago
    Most top tier pro cyclists clock 25000-35000 miles a year on their bikes, and race 80-140 days a year. Other than that, the job is mainly sitting around recovering. Although cycling is an incredibly complex sport, on the level of gridiron football or basketball in terms of the number of calculations that have to be made as part of tactical decisions, the longer-term playout of actions (at least in long road races) means that riders and their sporting directors (think coaches) have time to think about their decisions, and that combined with how much of racing is done on feel means there isn't the same need for things like film study and in-depth tactical coaching on a daily basis.
  - notatoad 13y ago
    Athletes have a lot of what might be called downtime in their schedule, but very little actual free time. downtime is a part of training, a good nap schedule and staying well rested between training sessions and races is very important. You can't just go off and pedal a helicopter because you've got a couple hours free.
- msandford 13y ago
  It seems it would be possible to get a pro to work on the project pro bono provided you picked the right guy. I was assuming the projects would go that route. Any reasonably intelligent pro cyclist would love to be the guy who set a world record like that, it's a similar achievement to the Gossamer Albatross. But that's a very good point you've made. I obviously didn't even factor in price.
curveship 13y ago
Bit of cycling geekery: if he can do 1100 watts for 30 seconds, he's probably around about 750-800 watts for 60 seconds. Power declines approximately with the inverse of time until it flattens out at your long-term sustainable power. A pro is probably somewhere in the 350 watts range of sustainable power, so doubling the duration would mean his power above the sustainable rate would be halved, putting his estimated 60 second power at 725 watts. In this particular range of power, the approximation tends to be a little low, so fudging upwards a bit puts him around 750-800 watts.
- JackGibbs 13y ago
  Those pro numbers are a little low. Although La Gazzetta's watt calculations have been somewhat questionable in the past, Tony Martin's wattage was given as 480 for the Mont Saint Michel TT on Tuesday. Shane Perkins, and Aussie track rider who is probably the strongest cyclist in the world in terms of pure brute strength, has a maximum output of 2500 watts (my guess is that is a ten second effort, they don't give it, but his 60 second effort is certainly higher than 1100 watts). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8H6fU9VNgQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8H6fU9VNgQ
  - curveship 13y ago
    An average pro (domestic and international) vs. the pro who just won a worldclass TT. An average weight pro vs. a big boy like Tony Martin or even more so Shane Perkins. I've seen quite a few pro wattage files, and 350 is fairly common for an average pro. The more reliable measure is w/kg. Pros tend to range anywhere from high 4s (low-level sprinters or rouleurs) to mid 6s (world class TT'ers or climbers), with most being somewhere in the 5s. If la gazzetta's numbers are right, and if we believe Tony Martin's posted weight of 75kg, his 480 watts puts him at 6.4 w/kg.
    - JackGibbs 13y ago
      I wasn't exactly thinking of Optum or Kenda, I was thinking of a Pro/WorldTour level rider. The numbers you mention are frightening close to these I found for Brian Vandborg: http://home.trainingpeaks.com/races/saxo-bank-sungard/2011-usa-pro-cycling-challenge/prologue.aspx http://home.trainingpeaks.com/races/saxo-bank-sungard/2011-u... - not exactly known as a powerhouse (there he is finish 47 seconds down over a 8km TT, and here he is barely beating Chris Anker Sorenson in a 40km time trial a few months before those figures: http://cqranking.com/men/asp/gen/race.asp?raceid=20722 http://cqranking.com/men/asp/gen/race.asp?raceid=20722). Sure, Domencio Pozzovizzio isn't putting out 400 watts sustained (he probably isn't putting out 300), but my feeling is that Siutsou, Chavanel, Tuft, Vanmarcke, Vaitkus, Malori and other riders of their ilk are creeping up towards the 375-400 range sustained. Don't get me wrong, I'm nitpicking here, I was just noting those numbers feel slightly low.
awongh 13y ago
this is surprising that they don't try to get world class cyclists. I'd like to point out the distinction from professionally paid road racers and olympic-level track (velodrome) riders. Road riders are always travelling, generally pretty busy and would probably be hard to get for a project like this, but more to the point, don't train for this kind of maximal wattage output. But in fact, the world record for the 1km time trial is right below 1 minute right now (58.875).... I read somewhere on the internet that world class kilo riders are doing <900 avg. watts to do a kilo. Not to mention the fact that these guys aren't really bothered by much outside an olympic year. otoh, canada doesn't have any of these caliber of riders, afaik.
- stan_rogers 13y ago
  We have had, including Curt Harnett, Jocelyn Lovell and (on the female side of things) Clara Hughes. The "thunderthighs" crowd does tend towards speed skating, though, which tends to be more accessible in a large country with few velodromes.

michael_miller 13y ago

To me, this is really cool, since presumably it means the materials have gotten light enough for an electric helicopter to become a reality (beyond the crappy Firefly project). Imagine what it would be like if you could commute from the suburbs of NY to the downtown heliport without paying for fuel or expensive maintenance. It could transform the way people commute to work, eliminating traffic and the effect of accidents.

pavel_lishin 13y ago
> It could transform the way people commute to work, eliminating traffic and the effect of accidents. Hopefully, the same people who are causing the accidents in cars won't be able to directly control the helicopter. A car wreck slowing traffic down to 10% on a freeway is preferable to death looming from the sky because someone really needs to check twitter right now.
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  This is the ultimate reason for not having flying vehicles. You lose one and it's injury and death all the way down. That said, gyro-copters have excellent fail safe properties (then can autorotate/glide to a landing without power) when controlled by someone, or something, committed to operating them safely.
  - starpilot 13y ago
    The FAA requires that all helicopters be capable of autorotation. We actually design and test for this extensively, by adding mass to the blade tips to store inertia, pilots regularly practicing power-off flight etc. Autogyros fly in constant autorotation (hence the name), the main rotor being unpowered.
- glhaynes 13y ago
  I'd wager that on the evolutionary path to personal aircraft, the development of self-driving cars is as necessary a step as the development of manually-driven cars and manually-piloted aircraft. Or to say it a different way: there'll never be widespread manually-piloted consumer aircraft.

rdl 13y ago

Is there a good overview of materials improvements over, say, the past 150 years? It seems like one of the areas, along with IT and biotech, which has had huge gains even in the past 20 years, contrary to the "end of innovation" thesis of Thiel et al. You can get carbon fiber in everything now, ceramics are more used in things other than pottery, and companies like Crucible made a lot of awesome steels (including...cast stainless steels!) from the 1970s to now. Sure, the properties don't get 10x better, but a 1% improvement in strength-at-2000C for the blades makes a jet turbine a lot more efficient.

cdwhite 13y ago
A standard intro materials science textbook wouldn't tell you exactly what you're looking for, but it would give you an idea of what the state of the art is and where different materials are used and also a little bit of potted history. I read Askeland, Fulay, and Wright's /The Science and Engineering of Materials/ a couple of months ago; it seemed like a mediocre book, but the material covered was fascinating (and reasonably clearly presented.)
durkie 13y ago
(i'm a material scientist by training and by trade (up till a month ago)) to me, the history of materials improvements is the history of materials characterization techniques. so much of materials science is just trying to figure out the right lever to pull to control some property, and modern tools like electron microscopy, tga/dsc, xps, afm, bet, etc. all provide amazing insight that was simply unavailable 150 years ago. but also, 150 years is a really long time frame. people were only just beginning to study material fatigue in the mid 1800s.

iandanforth 13y ago

For much more detail on the design I recommend the Draft FAI World Record Claim they are submitting. (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5093348/Draft%20Atlas%20World%20Record%20Claim.zip https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5093348/Draft%20Atlas%20...) Interesting tidbit: "The pedaling of the pilot pulls on and reels in four Vectran cords, which are pre-spooled onto each of the four rotor hubs. The action of unspooling the cord and pulling on the rotor hub drives each rotor to overcome the drag force."

pge 13y ago
thanks for the link - I saw the big spools in the video and was trying to figure out what was going on. I presume that means that flight time is limited by cord length (rather than having a circulating loop like a bike chain)?
- samstave 13y ago
  It would be interesting if they could get a version with six blades where (3) are required to provide lift and it oscillates between spooling/unspooling three of the six at a time such that you fly with 3 whilst spooling the other three - then "shift" between spools.
  - chockablock 13y ago
    I like it: a 'pull-only' transmission system to take advantage of the tensile strength of lightweight materials.
curveship 13y ago
Thanks for the link! Lots of interesting info: Empty Weight: 55.1 kg All-Up Weight: 130.1 kg Flight Power (0.5 m): 450 W Flight Power (3 m): 750 W I wonder if those wattage numbers are estimates or measurements.
- curveship 13y ago
  Replying to self, as I just noticed (awesome!) they included a power chart for the record flight. About 1kw for the first 12 secs, then settling down to 600w for most of remainder. That's a boss ride, especially for a 70kg rider. Dude's a monster.

peteretep 13y ago

I wonder if this will be like the four minute mile ... now it's been achieved a little, people will smash it, and my helicopter is on its way soon...

pmahoney 13y ago
The claim that a 4-minute mile was once thought to be impossible by informed observers was and is a widely propagated myth created by sportswriters and debunked by Bannister himself in his memoir, The Four Minute Mile (1955). The reason the myth took hold was that four minutes was a nice round number which was slightly better (1.4 seconds) than the world record for nine years, longer than it probably otherwise would have been because of the effect of World War II in interrupting athletic progress in the combatant countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bannister https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bannister
marvin 13y ago
I would be willing to bet that this will never make its way into a consumer product or even a hardcore hobbyist product. Even human-powered winged flight is on the borders of what is anatomically and physically possible, and helicopters are even farther out on the feasibility scale. It's cool for a proof of concept, but you won't be able to improve this design by an order of magnitude even with weightless materials.
- bigiain 13y ago
  True, but my ~$120 quadcopter has about 80% of the power this thing needs to climb to 3m. There are people out there building human carrying scaled-up hobby quadcopters (well, hexa or duodec or hexadec copters). I suspect there are (other) people out there now thinking things along the lines on "Hmmm, made from balsa and foam covered in poly film, prepreg carbon tube, kevlar tow, epoxy and cyano. All pretty common high-end but regularly homebuilt model plane techniques. 10m long rotor blades are big - but only 2 or 3 times longer than pretty common competition rc glider wings. There's a very reasonable chance that the right group of comp rc glider builders and quad rotor hobbyists could build something that weighs maybe only twice what this does, and has 5 or 10 times as much power available - probably for a budget of not much more that $10k." I don't think "hardcore hobbyists" will be pedaling one of these anytime soon, but flying something similar electrically is certainly not an impossibility.

methehack 13y ago

Awesome! It's inspirational to see people attempt something they're not sure they can do, work hard for a good while, and finally do it. Just what I needed to start the afternoon!

sadfaceunread 13y ago

Pretty cool result. I'd wonder what the performance would be with ~150 lb of batteries, motors and electronic sensors/controllers instead of a human. I wonder if given the same mechanics of this system a human is the optimal motor just because of the built-in automation and control system (probably not).

makmanalp 13y ago

Wow, I love that the blades seem to be spinning so slow, yet it all works. Exciting times to be a human.

incision 13y ago

Interesting that Aerovelo won this. As I recall, they were the only contender not using electronic assists which were set to become invalid this month: 'With the pilot using both hands and feet to power the aircraft, UMD faced a challenge developing a control system for the Gamera II. But an attempt to clarify the rule prohibiting energy-storage devices inadvertently opened the door to electronic controls being used on both the Gamera II and Upturn II. AHS has closed the loophole, but both teams have until July to attempt winning the prize under previous rules.[0] 0: http://www.aviationweek.com/Article/PrintArticle.aspx?id=/article-xml/AW_03_04_2013_p68-553183.xml&p=1&printView=true http://www.aviationweek.com/Article/PrintArticle.aspx?id=/ar...

oh_teh_meows 13y ago

It is possible, perhaps through a clever arrangement of gears and what not, to create a human powered copter that can create sufficient lift with just one rotor?

starpilot 13y ago
Probably, but you'd need a tailrotor or tip props on the blade tips for countertorque. There was an unsuccessful HPH design with one tip-driven rotor. The negative is that you're generating aerodynamic force that is non-lifting, and thus wasting power. Four rotors were probably chosen for this design (and many past others) for stability; a helicopter in hover is about as stable as an air hockey puck, it needs constant control input to stay in one spot. Directional control is much easier with a vehicle resting on four legs than on one.
b_emery 13y ago
Interesting question. Seems like they have a lot of weight in the superstructure that would be removed with a single blade (and tail rotor).
- starpilot 13y ago
  You lose weight in the external structure, but you'd gain some back in stiffening the blades to prevent excessive blade deflection (you'd have one big rotor instead of four small ones). You could also stiffen with external tension cables, but these rotate with the blades and would incur drag (streamlined wires were invented for this reason, also bicycle wheel disk covers) and disturb the axial flow. It's all about tradeoffs. - former HPH member

ChuckMcM 13y ago

The shape of things to come I suspect. While folks talk about blimps and what not there is value to having "permanent" points of presence in the air above, be it a communications node, surveillance node, or early warning theatre defence. 'Human powered' is a good predictor of 'solar powered' since the total energy extractable from humans per pound payload is lower than solar. Thus if you're doing the calculus for keeping something up 24x7, this is a good indication you are close.

scoot 13y ago
>the total energy extractable from humans per pound load is lower than solar Whilst that may be true, don't forget that the energy output is in kinetic form, so for comparison you'd need to factor in the weight of motors, and for a "permanent" presence, some form of energy storage for night time use (and batteries are far from light!)
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  Yup, now do the math. 1 sq meter of monocrystalline cells (approximately 2kg) deriving about 166W/hr over a 6 hr solar "day" (1000 W.hrs) stored in LiFePo batteries (about 1kG/100 W.hrs) so 10kg of betteries, with .5 kg of electronics (battery charger) and wires, delivered over 24hrs or 12.5kg/41watts continuous. Human athelete lets call it 165 lbs, so 75kg, or 6 * 12.5 or 246 continuous watts over a 24hr period, or a total of just over 5.9Kwh per 24hr period. So basically anything a human can power, an equivalent mass of solar power infrastructure can power. The interesting bit is of course that you can use it all at once (like a human sprint) or spread it out over time. It will have more surface area however which often limits the ability to just swap solar cells for other forms of power.
  - HNJohnC 13y ago
    What about the weight of the motors?
    - ChuckMcM 13y ago

jtchang 13y ago

Nothing short of astounding. Some people didn't think it could be done. And now we have something that truly proves it. What's next? Lighter materials? I'd love to play around with something like this and not have to be a world class cyclist.

enraged_camel 13y ago
I want to be able to commute to work with it!
jrblast 13y ago
For "What's next?" I would hope for something smaller. Impressive as this is, it's way to big to be practical. I suppose lighter materials could help reduce the size though.

psb 13y ago

Is cycling the most efficient way to extract power from human muscles? I would guess something like deadlift/rowing motion to be better

pge 13y ago
for sustained power output of any duration, pedaling a fixed gear crank is about as good as it gets for getting power out of a human body. See Bicycling Science by David Wilson, MIT Press, for some interesting quantitative analysis. As an example to address your specific suggestion of rowing, compare a rowing scull with the Decavitator (MIT built pedal powered boat). Edit: Corrected typo noted below - "skull" to "scull" - oops.
- HeyLaughingBoy 13y ago
  You should probably correct "skull" to "scull." Reading "rowing skull" then immediately mis-reading "Decavitator" as "Decapitator" was an interesting WTF?!? on my part ;-)
- Someone 13y ago
  The huge speed difference with a single scull probably has more to do with inefficiencies in 'the drive train' (moving your weight around in a rowing shell introduces dipping, which loses energy; using oars is less efficient than using a propeller) than with inefficiencies of the rowing motion vs a cycling motion. http://rowingbike.com/site/EN/ http://rowingbike.com/site/EN/ shows a bike operated using a rowing motion. That machine is competitive with 'normal' recumbent bikes, except in climbs. The main parts also could be fitted on that Decavitator. I would expect similar speeds.
  - pge 13y ago
    Interesting point - it may be that rowing is comparable to biking in power, but the ease of building a cycling drivetrain generally wins out for projects like this, because the parts are readily available in any bike store (the cockpit of the copter here is an off-the-shelf bike frame and crankset attached to the spools).

WestCoastJustin 13y ago

Here is the official release [1], their homepage also have a great video of what looks like the successful run [2]. As one of the people that donated to the Kickstarter this make me very happy! [1] http://www.aerovelo.com/2013/07/11/aerovelo-officially-awarded-ahs-sikorsky-prize/ http://www.aerovelo.com/2013/07/11/aerovelo-officially-award... [2] http://www.aerovelo.com/ http://www.aerovelo.com/

thetwiceler 13y ago

This is really cool! On a similar note, for those of you who may not be aware, there has also been a human-powered airplane: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Albatross http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Albatross I am totally amazed by the Gossamer Albatross. It was made in 1979. And here's the most awesome part - a cyclist flew it across the English Channel!

techboots 13y ago

Way cooler than some app redone with better UI. Hopefully, this sort of stuff is the future.

farinasa 13y ago

This doesn't actually seem to be a helicopter. It looks like a multicopter. There is a significant function and theoretical difference.