Canada Ping!
Posted on 07/12/2013 9:48:39 AM PDT by posterchild
A long-elusive aviation innovation prize that has never had a winner in its 33-year existence has finally been claimed after a team of Toronto engineers built and then flew a human-powered hover bike.
The highly-coveted Igor I. Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition — known as the AHS Sikorsky prize for short — was awarded for the first time in its history Thursday to AeroVelo, a Toronto-based engineering team made up of University of Toronto students, alumni and volunteers.
University of Toronto alumni, students and volunteers built the Atlas aircraft, which was piloted more than three metres into the air last month. The team named their winning invention Atlas, and were able to have the aircraft climb 3.3 metres in the air for a 64-second duration before the pilot landed it gently about seven metres away from its takeoff point.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbc.ca ...
Canada Ping!
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Leonardo would be proud!
Not terribly practical but interesting just the same.
“Not terribly practical but interesting just the same.”
The head of the patent office said of the telephone, “Well, I suppose it’s interesting, but who would want it? We have a huge supply of messenger boys.”
The flying bike is inside an auditorium because wind would shred it in seconds it also takes an enormous amount of energy to keep it airborn. A human powered flight across the English channel happened 30 years ago yet there are no practical human powered planes today.
Well, that looks practical!
That's because no-one has built a recumbent flying bike.
;^)
Ooooh, impressive.
I wonder if they had a 1st grader filming it. How about a long shot next time so we can see the whole machine.
Ridiculous contraption.
The Yuri 1 designed by professor Naito of Nihon University had held the record since 1994.
This is the same design with 19 years of advancement in materials.
Still it’s quite the engineering feat. The rotors are twice as big as those on the Yuri!
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