The banal joystick from the console and the accelerometer from the disassembled "Googlephone" served the Dutch engineer Jarnos Smetz with the controls for his cyberwings. Leonardo da Vinci's sketches and robotic artificial muscles completed the rest, finally allowing humans to fly like a bird.
To solve this problem, 31-year-old Dutch inventor Jarnos Smetz spent eight months creating not just wings, but cyberwings. According to his calculations, for a flight with a dead weight of 80 kg and a cyberwing weight of 20 kg, 2 kW of rated power (almost 3 hp) are needed, of which his hands could give no more than 5% (a person is able to develop up to 13 hp). with., but only for a very short time and only the best samples). Therefore, he immediately excluded them from consideration, believing that the hands should rather be guided (through the joystick) than waving. Everything else was left to the mercy of motors, based on ordinary serial mechanisms obtained from … robotic prostheses.
"I've always dreamed about this!" - exclaims the pioneer of flapping cyber aeronautics. And it's true: even Yarnos's father tried to make an apparatus set in motion by muscular force. Fortunately, Mr. Smetz himself went the other way, knowing full well that not only human strength, but also muscles in general for such a flight is not enough. Even the most massive flying birds that have ever existed - hunting moas and carrying, according to Maori legends, human children - weighed no more than 15 kg. With a human mass, you can fly this way either in a dense atmosphere, or with a gravity of 0.3g or less (like on Titan).
Therefore, Jarno turned to the help of Bert Otten, a specialist in neuromechanics, with whom he thought about placing motors with a total power of 2 kW in his wings. The shape of the cyberwings was inspired, according to the inventor, by the sketches of a man with mechanical wings attributed to Leonardo.
They are made of fabric on a rigid frame; each weighs only a kilogram, despite its rather large load-bearing surface. They were made of fabric from a Slingshot Fuel hang glider with an area of about 17 m². The upper part of the wing is curved significantly, so the profile looks "thick". As the inventor notes, this was the only way to provide acceptable lift. Moreover, during the flight, he had to tie an additional piece of fabric between his legs, in the manner of a "tail wing".
But, despite all the inconveniences, after the end of the minute flight (batteries!), He rightfully said: “A magical moment. Best feeling I've ever had in my life."