Da Vinci Decoded: Toronto team wins human-powered helicopter challenge

In 1493 Leonardo da Vinci sketched his idea for a human-powered flying machine:

Over 500 years later, a team from the University of Toronto has won a 33 year old competition by designing, building and flying a human-powered helicopter:

courtesy of AeroVelo

To win the AHS Human Powered Helicopter Competition
$250,000 prize, teams had to fly an aircraft using only human power
for at least one minute, reach an altitude of at least 3 meters and
hover over a 10 meter by 10 meter area. This challenge was issued by the
American Helicopter Society in 1980 and has attracted entrants from
around the world.

The Toronto team, AeroVelo, worked for 18 months to design, build and test their winning helicopter. Project leaders Todd Reichert and Cameron Robertson were joined by other University of Toronto engineering graduates and students as work on the helicopter, called Atlas, progressed.

Part of the funding for the project was crowdsourced through a Kickstarter campaign.

The winning design used ultra-lightweight materials and four large rotors around the pilot, or "powerplant", who produced 1.1 kW of power to lift Atlas 3.3 meters into the air. The technical information on AeroVelo's website has details about the aircraft's design, construction and testing.

Watch the award winning flight: