This is truly amazing! A Dutch engineer named Jarno Smeets has achieved birdlike flight. An article on Wired Science explained...
According to Smeets’ calculations, he needed approximately 2,000 Watts of continuous power to support his roughly 180-pound frame and 40-pound wing pack. His arms could only really provide 5 percent of that, so the rest would have to come from motors. His arms and pecs would basically serve to guide the device and to flap the wings.
He built his electronic, wireless wing set out of Wii controllers, accelerometers harvested from an HTC Wildfire Android phone and Turnigy motors.
I have no idea what a Turnigy motor is, but I'm glad someone has actually found a useful application for Wii controllers and Android phones.
I don't speak Dutch but I'm pretty sure I know what Mr. Smeets is saying around 1:33 and 1:35 in the video so I will spare my readers a full translation.
If you are interested in more details (in English) Mr. Smeets has a blog at Human Birdwings.
Bravo sir!
13 comments:
If you fiddle with the little icons at the bottom, you can turn on English subtitles.
At the end, he says it's the best feeling he's ever had in his life.
I wonder if it really is better than.... could it possibly be better than.....
....sailing?
I see there's also a lot of discussion around on the Interweb tubes that this whole thing may be a hoax. I'm sure the truth will be revealed in the next few days, but I'm betting that it's real. The depth of feeling put into that expletive at 1:35 would be hard to fake.
The thought crossed my mind it may be a hoax, but I'd really like to believe it. Yeah, I think it's for real.
The thought crossed my mind that he's never felt anything better in his life, but I'd really like to believe he has.
And someone I follow on Facebook - can't remember who now - linked to this a few weeks ago.
If the Dutchman is a hoax, this may have been his inspiration.
All I get is the same ol' Bait & Switch at this site. When I saw the headline, I expected to see featured a Flying Dutchman or a Flying Dutchman, not the quixotic contrivance above.
Thanks for that compliment Doc. Yes, indeed, this site is famous for its proud history of Bait and Switch.
Now just have to work out how to apply this technology to the Laser. Just imagine controlling your roll tacks with a wii remote!
You should have read the article. Wired told you it was a Hoax when you sent it. I got a chuckle.
"quixotic hoax"
Actually, not so John.
When I published this post on March 21 at 9:44 AM EDT (6:44 PDT) the article on Wired presented this story as a straightforward factual report with not a hint that it was not true.
At 8:15 AM PDT, Wired posted an update that saved that the authenticty of the video had been "questioned" by some other websites but saying that "Wired’s preliminary analysis by physicist Rhett Allain found nothing in the video that indicates it must be a fake."
At 11:15 AM PDT they changed the title of the post to indicate that they hadn't been able to confirm the story. The title now read Man "Claims" To Fly etc. etc.
At 2:15 PM PDT they posted an update to say that there were inconsistencies in the video and Smeet's resumes.
At 1:06 PM PDT (4:06 PM EDT) on Mar 22 they reported that "a Dutch artist named Floris Kaayk has admitted that “Human Birdwings” was an elaborate hoax 8 months in the making."
I was out sailing at the time Wired reported it was definitely a hoax. I wrote my post saying it was a hoax later that same evening.
John, I believe you receive my blog post by email? It is true that Feedburner did not email this post until March 22 at 8:21 AM (at least that is the time on the email it sent me) so it is entirely possible that you read the email and first went to the Wired link after they had updated the site to say it was a hoax.
I may be gullible, but I did read the whole article, and I didn't deliberately mislead my readers.
And, I'll personally punch out any one who alleges deliberate fraud on your part!
Thanks Doc.
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