Human Powered Helicopter

marcopo writes "In response to a 24 year old prize challenge from the American Helicopter Society, a number of engineering students at the University of British Columbia have designed a human powered helicopter. The prize requirements are 3 minutes flight at 3 meters, with only human power, and the team, led by UBC's Mike Georgallis, plans a test flight next Tuesday. The Vancouver Sun also has the story."

Comments

The Fred Flintstone Chopper

[mfh]

Yaba-Daba-Dooooo!!!!! ~~~~~*Sppppppplat*

Re:The Fred Flintstone Chopper

[plover]

More like the Fred Flintstone web server.

"Pedal faster, Barney, we're getting slashdotted!"

"Uh, gee, Fred, I don't think we should pedal any faster in this thing..."

"Just shut up and pedal, Barney, we'll be -- "

"FRED FLINTSTONE! YOU COME DOWN FROM THERE RIGHT THIS INSTANT!!"

"But Wilma, the slashdotters want to see our pictures."

"THIS INSTANT!"

"Yes, Wilma."

[ mechanical sproink sound ]

"Aww, gee, Fred, I told you this thing wouldn't last."

Interesting FAQ Question

[danratherfan]

12.) WILL IT FLY? The machine is heavier than originally designed... The unknown at the moment is whether the machine will break up prior to lift off. Whether or not any system will break up becomes all the more relevant when it involves humans and rotating blades.

Bah, fraternities have had this for a long time

[xsupergr0verx]

Instruction manual:
1. Place helmet on head. Take a swig from your hip flask. Decide you don't need the helmet.
2. Spread arms parallel to ground.
3. Hum 'whirrrr' as you spin yourself to speed.
4. Upon striking your head on the floor on the way down, remark how free you feel in the open air.

OH NO!

[schnits0r]

First the machines use us to power helecopers! Soon they will have us power all their functions after we scortch the sun! Who is with me? We must stop this to save Zion!

Do corpses burn hot enough for a steam engine?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

That's the only real question. They should be more careful wording the requirement.

Re:Do corpses burn hot enough for a steam engine?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the rules:

4.2.2 No member of the crew shall be permitted to leave or enter the aircraft at any time during takeoff or flight.

Drifting away as smoke and ash is probably included ...

Long way.

[Malicious]

3 Meters is a pretty high distance to fall from, even without being surrounded by fast moving metal, cogs, and chains. Considering that they'll want to optimize the weight of the machine, there will almost certainly be no safety cage or equipment.
I sure as hell wouldn't want to pilot it.

Re:Long way.

[Anonymous Coward]

I sure as hell wouldn't want to pilot it.

That's why you're posting on Slashdot and not doing anything useful. Same with me.

Re:Long way.

[lommer]

First of all, three meters isn't all that much, it's roughly 10 feet. Second, you're not surrounded by that much metal cogs and chains. As you pointed out they want to reduce weight, so almost the entire thing is built of composites. Further, if you read about the design, they are favouring larger, slower-moving rotors and associated equipment over faster smaller ones. Thirdly, any engineer worth his salt would take time to make sure that if the machine DID fall from 3 meters, the supports for the person/seat could be constructed to collapse and absorb the shock.

Finally, as with most under-powered helicopters, the most likely mode of failure is only being able to hop a couple feet off the ground, if they can lift off at all. Read up some helicopter flying books sometime, it's pretty inderesting how much more the ground effect affects them than fixed wing aircraft. This post is much longer than inteded, so I'll cut here with the conclusion that I if I could fly helicopters, I'd jump on this opportunity in seconds. That said, flying a helicopter is probably one of the hardest things I've ever tried to do (I'm a fixed-wing pilot).

Re:Long way.

[WindBourne]

If the machine breaks apart, then yes, you are probably in trouble. But if all that happens is a chain slips, pilot get tired, etc, then the craft will autogyro in. That is the spinning blades will allow the pilot down much easier.

Re:Long way.

[ergo98]

Lets put you in a chair and drop you straight down, see how well you fare.

If the occupant instantly lost absolutely all lift, they'd hit the ground at about 27 km/h - fairly hard, but certainly not fatal or serious on most surfaces (I'd presume they'd do this over grass or the like). Of course in reality it's highly unlikely that absolutely all lift would disappear (the thing would have to get itself up to 3 meters - if it lost lift, it'd more likely be a gradual reduction), so the much more likely scenario is a signficantly slower impact. Maybe someone will twist an ankle or pull a joint, but it's hardly life threatening.

500 Watts

[pHatidic]

In case anyone here doesnt know about generating watts, 500 sustained for over 3 minutes is quite a task. I have been rowing for 7 years and this year our team had physiological testing where we started at 200 watts and increased by 50 every 2 minutes. I last about 8 minutes and managed to hit about 400 watts but couldnt hold it long enough to be allowed to continue to 450. We increased in this manner in order to find our VO2 maxes, and certainly had I started at 500 watts I could have held it for a while, maybe a minute and a half. But 3 minutes is just sick. Especially since this was on the rowing machine which uses all muscles and this guy is only uses his legs, no back and arms. This 3 minute test will generate enough lactic acid to kill the average 60 year old man, and will certainly leave him in excruciating pain if he is able to do it at all.

Re:500 Watts

[emeitner]

Yeah, the competition seems to require alot of the pilots. From the FAQ:
We have built our own test rig that measures power output of a pilot over a minute duration. We have plotted the results of numerous potential pilots against their weight. A successful candidate is one that falls above a power requirement curve (power vs. weight). ... We have had people vomit after these one-minute tests. In similar tests in the United States they have had one person have a mild heart attack.

Vomit AND rotating blades, nice.

Re:500 Watts

[Zooka]

Even if he can't, I'll bet money that Lance Armstrong or a similarly well-conditioned pro cyclist can hold this thing off the ground easily.

I bet it will indeed take an exceptional athlete such as Armstrong to measure up to the task.
Example:

"Data from several researchers shows that professional cyclists produce power outputs of between 320 and 450 watts during time trials ranging from 5 to 70 km in major tours."

"Dr. Alejandro Lucia, Universidad Europea de Madrid, Spain, has predicted that Lance Armstrong on his ascent of the Alpe D¹Huez (a 14 km climb of 8% mean gradient) in the 2001 Tour de France produced one of the greatest performances in the history of cycling: 38 minutes of near-maximal to maximal effort at an estimated mean power output as high as 475-500 watts! His average speed was 22 kilometers/hour, which he reached at a mean cadence of about 100-rpm using a 39 x 23 gear. Lance would have been averaging about 7 watts/kg."

http://www.polarusa.com/consumer/powerkit/Article2 .asp

Re:Wait

[KillerCow]

Can they use a battery? As in charge the battery using human power and then run the motor off the battery power???

From the rules:

4.1.4 No devices for storing energy either for takeoff or for use in flight shall be permitted. Rotating aerodynamic components, such as rotor blades, used for lift and/or control are exempt from consideration as energy storing devices.,

Re:Wings

[LauraScudder]

The technique usually used for this I understand is conformal mapping. There's a little spiel and animation about it here. The calculation itself isn't really that fun, at least from what I remember from my homework assignments, but its pretty cool that it can be done systematically for all these airfoils.

If you are into the details, from the the Riemann theorem quoted in the wikipedia link, any simply connected subset of the complex plane can be mapped onto a disk, and since it's easy to conformally map from a disk to the complex plane minus that disk - like in the figure on the second linked page - then once you know that first mapping for whatever shape your airfoil is (the hard part) you can figure out all the fluid flows around that shape. Of course, this entire technique only works for infinitely long airfoils, since the complex plane just represents a cross-section. If you dislike math and want the actual figure you can just stick it into an air-tunnel and skip the calculation. But you get the idea.

I'll Wait.

[the pickle]

...for a motorised version.

Whilst there's something undeniably cool about what basically amounts to an airborne bicycle, I'd settle for an airborne moped. Using a small (~1-2 bhp) moped engine would make for only a minor weight increase, and it would surely make for less sweat ;)

I'm a certificated pilot (fixed-wing) who's flown helicopters (a Robinson R22 Beta) once, and that was so incredibly fun that I'd hop in an ultralight homebuilt chopper in a second. Just let me know where to buy the kit.

p