A Kickstarter-funder human-powered helicopter (HPH) Atlas has finally won the Sikorsky Prize, establish 33 years ago, for spending 64.11 seconds airborne in 10.8 feet altitude, with a drift of 32.1 feet. AeroVelo, an engineering team from Canada, went even beyond the official requirements of the competition, which were asking the participants to have their helicopters up in the air for at least 60 seconds, reaching the altitude of 9.8 feet.
AeroVelo, consisting of two PhDs, one MASx and some undergrad students, were originally aiming to raise $30.000 on Kickstarter, but ended up with more than $34.000, which they used for the construction of Atlas. The historic Sikorsky Prize, establish by the American Helicopter Society (AHS), was sought after by a number of different teams, yet nobody has managed to achieve what is called one of the greatest challenges in aviation history before. Check out their amazing victory in the video below!
Website: kickstarter.com
In 1980, AHS put up a $250K prize for the first HPH to hover for 1 min and reach a height of 3 m
