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Uncategorized Wednesday, November 2nd 2011 at 2:09 pm

First Manned Multicopter Takes Flight, Looks Like a Complete Deathtrap

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You’ve been waiting with bated breath, and finally, it has happened: The first manned multicopter flight. What does this mean for the future of aviation? Pretty much nothing, but you can’t say it isn’t impressive. The intention behind a multicopter is to create a propeller-powered flying craft with the ability to hover — okay, a helicopter — and move the pilot or passenger from a relatively logical and safe position beneath the blades, to an absolutely insane and dangerous position among them. A worthwhile endeavor if ever there was one, right?

What’s more, while this little trip was manned, the lunatic in the seat there wasn’t even the pilot, apparently. For one minute and thirty seconds, he sat twiddling his thumbs while his buddy, who he must literally trust with his life, piloted the drone by remote control from the ground. Thankfully, nothing went wrong, so the video of the event is impressive, not horrifying.

(via Engadget)

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  • Fred

    Lunatic in the seat wasn’t the pilot?  The guy in the seat was shown in a closeup holding the controls and it’s clear he’s controlling the flight with them.  There most clearly visible at the end of the flight.

  • Talesin BatBat

    Uh, yeah… the pilot/passenger appears to be controlling it with a fairly standard 2.4GHz RC plane/helicopter controller (by the small, bent antenna). While he was (literally) twiddling his thumbs, he was also piloting the whole thing. You don’t need a giant joystick any more to manually move the control surfaces around in this wonderful era of servos and computer control.

  • http://Geekosystem.com Eric Limer

    Yeah, it sure looks like that, but the source I got the story from stated fairly explicitly that he wasn’t actually flying the thing. I figured they knew something I didn’t. It DOES look like he’s doing something though.

  • Troyldailey

    hmm…well, unless your “source” was actually one of the three involved in this particular start-up…I think that they may have been speaking from their nether regions.  You should know more than anyone, just because somebody gives you a story-lead does not mean they are privy to any factual data about it.