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Man Supposedly Flies With Custom-Built Bird Wings

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31–40 of 164 posts

Re: Man Supposedly Flies With Custom-Built Bird Wings

#31

incredible. i never really thought how jarring and jerky flapping wings would be...

i can't wait for the fine-tuning and improvements to the wing design and mechanical assistance system to reach flying finesse. with all respect though, he really looks like a giant bird taking off and then gliding. on another note, it'd be so cool to watch human flying sports to spawn from this à la track or polo.

Re: Man Supposedly Flies With Custom-Built Bird Wings

#34
Things that make this video implausible:

1) You have the engineering fortitude to come up with something that has never been done before, and you choose to attach it to your body with a consumer grade backback? And not even a full hiking one with multiple points of attachment? No rock-climbing harness?

2) Fabric is waaay too loose on the wings to be effective in any kind of aerodynamic sense. At best this is a kite

3) He would "only be able to come up with 5% of the power needed", so he used a bunch of Turnigy motors and some magical super-compact power supply to provide the necessary lift? Not to mention, motors aren't exactly built for rapid oscillation back and forth, and I see no complex mechanisms to turn rotations into a very strong/rapid oscillating force

4) There are ZERO control surfaces on those wings to be able to pull up for a landing like he does. No, that pillow case between his legs doesn't count.

5) An Android operated system, that dynamically reads two separate wii remotes, and converts that accelerometer input into wing movements would not be that responsive.

6) No continuous shot from take-off to landing

7) No shot of the gear used to accomplish this, whether it be the motors/batteries/wiring/pulleys

Re: Man Supposedly Flies With Custom-Built Bird Wings

#40

I believe this could be real, but the wings are powered by 4 electric motors. He uses an HTC Android phone and a WiiMote to read the movements of his arms, and that readings are used to control the wings. There are many more details on his blog http://www.humanbirdwings.net/project-timeline/ Edit: JoeCortopassi raised some good points in his comment. I'm not so sure this is plausible, even with the 4 motors.

If it's written on a blog, it's certainly true, then?

No, it's not. I'm just pointing out the 4 electric motors because they're not directly visible in the video, and their use makes the whole flying thing a bit more plausible.

You can see a pic of said motors here: http://www.humanbirdwings.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Tim...

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