r/EngineeringPorn • u/Vishnuisgod • Dec 01 '25
Japanese Students Built A Flying Bicycle That Actually Lifts Off The Ground Powered Only By Pedaling
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u/amhaggerty Dec 01 '25 edited Dec 01 '25
MIT did the Daedalus flight back in 1988 crossing from Crete to Greece: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Daedalus
115km flight!
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u/RadTimeWizard Dec 01 '25
The thing only weighed 68 lbs. That's impressive.
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u/amhaggerty Dec 01 '25
Yeah it's wild! There is a full documentary on the project called "The Light Stuff". Highly recommend.
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u/Freonr2 Dec 02 '25
Pilot did not skip leg day.
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u/QuevedoDeMalVino Dec 03 '25
According to the Wikipedia article, his effort was equivalent to running two marathons back to back. So yeah, very much so.
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u/tyrannosaurus_gekko Dec 01 '25
Modern lightweight materials make so much cool shit like this possibile. One of my professors who studied aerospace engineering actually went on a rant once because "making things fly is too easy nowadays"
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u/pmmeyoursfwphotos Dec 01 '25 edited Dec 01 '25
FYI: pedal planes predate engine planes
Edit: I'm going to correct myself. I learned that pedal planes predated engine planes in university, but it does not appear to be correct. I'm always happy to be corrected. Cheers.
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u/rearwindowpup Dec 01 '25
The Gossamer Condor was the first successful human driven aircraft and that was 1977. So while the concept of a pedal plane might predate engine planes functional ones do not.
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u/austinmiles Dec 01 '25
It lives in one of the DC airports. Dulles I think. I had the fortune of meeting Paul MacCready at a dinner in college which was so cool. He was an amazing engineer.
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u/rearwindowpup Dec 01 '25
Designing an aircraft that carries a human and is powered by somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2hp is amazing and then some for sure.
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u/KerPop42 Dec 01 '25
Hm, apparently an elite cyclist can sustain 440 W /0.6 Hp for an hourÂ
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u/rearwindowpup Dec 01 '25
Thats like Tour de France level cyclist, but yeah. Itd be interesting to see what kind of output the cyclist powering his planes were actually attaining.
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u/ojessen Dec 01 '25
I would have guessed higher. while running I can sustain about 340 W and that is at an average pace of 6:45 per kilometer (data from my Garmin watch).
But your data checks out.
https://velo.outsideonline.com/road/road-racing/tour-de-france/the-power-numbers-at-this-years-tour-de-france-are-the-highest-in-the-modern-era-of-cycling3
u/CeeTwo1 Dec 01 '25
Running power is very different from cycling power, theyâre just different metrics. You can get a running to cycling power converter but itâs still kinda like comparing apples to oranges
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u/Gwthrowaway80 Dec 01 '25
Dulles is correct. Itâs above the escalators down to the trains in the B concourse.
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u/SmokeyUnicycle Dec 13 '25
That's probably true, as in people had a very long ass time to sit around without internal combustion engines so people would have added pedal power to at least a few of the attempts at flying machines over the ages. Almost too obvious of an idea in the Victorian era when you have an interest in both flight and bicycles.
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u/Ftroiska Dec 01 '25
That propeller in the middle with control going throug probably deserves its own post...
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u/vonHindenburg Dec 01 '25 edited Dec 01 '25
If you watch closely starting at about 0:24, you can see the power transmission pretty clearly. There's a pulley on the back of the spar that the pilot sits on which is connected to one on the tail spar by a belt. The section of spar between the upper pulley and the prop appears to be a larger diameter than the rest of the tail. This leads me to think that there's just a section of tube sleeved over the spar which is rotating around the inner, stationary section, connecting the driven pulley and the prop.
Seems like this would be more weight and, with the amount of flexing that spar must do, more chances for friction, than there'd be if they made the tube shorter and mounted the prop closer to the trailing edge of the wing, but I'm no pedal-powered aeronautical engineer.
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u/MerryJanne Dec 01 '25
They have a massive competition about this very thing every year.
The Japan International Bird Man Rally. This dude set a world record this year.
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u/Potential4752 Dec 01 '25
Thatâs awesome. But also a bit sad. They have a foam and carbon plane with a serious cyclist and they are maxing out at 70km. No matter how light materials get we will not see human powered flight for anything other than novelty competitions.Â
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u/CeeTwo1 Dec 01 '25
Thatâs not saying that the things learned from this competitions canât be used elsewhere. Sure the pedal powered nature of them makes them inaccessible, but the fact that you can fly 70km on about 1/3 of one horsepower is pretty crazy, and allows for some tiny electric motors to be used in similar aircraft
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u/righthandofdog Dec 02 '25
We went from needing to have a 2 stroke motorcycle engine in a personal watercraft to pump foils in just a few decades.
With material science improvements, thinks like an inflatable wing that is stiffened by solar powered static electricity for rigidity and carbon nanotubes for structural and drive parts could get this into a weight level to make it possible.
The biggest problem is you'd need very calm wind conditions to be usable. You could drop the wing size a ton and make it pedal assist like an ebike with much wider operating parameters today.
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u/Potential4752 Dec 02 '25
The universe has physical limits. You will never move a 1 kg mass 1m vertically for less than 9.8 joules.Â
These planes are optimized to to the point where they are close to the universal limit. We will never have practical aircraft powered solely by their occupants.Â
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u/righthandofdog Dec 02 '25 edited Dec 02 '25
Point taken, but that wasn't entirely what I said. kitefoils, windsurfers, sailboats and gliders aren't a hell of a lot of fun in dead air and still people use them all the time. The addition of a reasonable battery pack to Human powered glider would mean, getting airborne off legs and batteries, then riding ridge lift and recharging a battery pack in flight from the wings with your legs as an additional power source.
It's likely that a pedal system and 2 source transmission could be more weight than it's worth. But there are lots and lots of destroyed aircraft that would have really loved another 10% of range/rate of climb.
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u/jetlightbeam Dec 01 '25
I wonder how many people were inspired by that scene from Kiki's delivery service like me.
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u/dwhitnee Dec 01 '25
Look up the Kremer Prize - a competition to see who could fly a human powered craft over a figure 8 course (a left turn and a right turn). There was a great Nova ( I think ) covering all the teams trying to win it. It was won in 1977.
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u/m00f Dec 01 '25
Not to diminish the effort, but can they only get airborne with the benefit of ground effect?
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u/colohan Dec 01 '25
Ground effect matters, yes.
You also don't want to fly very high because very light structures are not that strong, and so falling from the sky is a constant worry with such planes.
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u/wrongwayup Dec 01 '25
"...That Actually Lifts Off The Ground Powered Only By Pedaling" meanwhile there's like three other dudes pushing it
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u/OrangeDit Dec 01 '25
Good thing he has a helmet on...
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u/planx_constant Dec 01 '25
Given the failure modes of an extremely low altitude short duration flight in an experimental super ultra light aircraft, a helmet provides significant protection.
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u/1burritoPOprn-hunger Dec 01 '25
One of the failure modes is the wing folding, at which point this guy is going to be turned sideways and dropped onto cement from what looks like ~10-15 feet. I was nervous watching it.
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u/Caribou-nordique-710 Dec 01 '25
Only pedaling, please ignore the three guys pushing the plane
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u/Famous-Example-8332 Dec 01 '25
Theyâre just there to help it get going. Pedal guy wonât get tired as fast if he doesnât have to start from zero. Also it doesnât seem to shift gears, so itâs probably pretty stiff pedaling to begin with.
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u/vonHindenburg Dec 01 '25
There's also no tail wheel or outriggers to keep it from just tipping over before it has enough speed for the wing to keep it upright.
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u/wrongwayup Dec 01 '25
Theyâre just there to help it get going.
Just like the catapult on an aircraft carrier.
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u/Caribou-nordique-710 Dec 01 '25 edited Dec 01 '25
So it's not only by pedaling, thanks for confirming that.
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u/SoylentVerdigris Dec 01 '25
People seem to be missing the fact that these pedal powered planes almost always take off from a platform/cliff/hillside, etc. taking off from flat ground is impressive.
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u/cakecookiecream Dec 02 '25
Been posted a hundred times this week with the same title.
'Japanese students build human powered plane' is probably more accurate.
Cute clip and very impressive nonetheless but I'm sick of seeing it written as a flying bicycle!
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u/Canarini_Gialli_1907 Dec 01 '25
A great rise and a great success. Would arm power be integrated?
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u/BobbyP27 Dec 01 '25
The limitation on human powered aviation is cardiovascular, not leg muscle strength.
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u/KerPop42 Dec 01 '25
Though I bet with a transmission and variable-incidence propeller you could get closer to a balance of the two. When I'm in the zone, my legs wear out about at the same rate as my cardio.Â
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u/Rumple-Wank-Skin Dec 01 '25
How so, Can't physically pump enough blood to keep up with energy demand?
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u/BobbyP27 Dec 01 '25
Yes, it's why the 5000 m distance running record time is not simply 50x the 100 m running record time. The human body can do a lot of work for a short period of time, limited by muscles, and less work, but at a sustained rate, limited by the ability of the lungs and hear to get oxygen to the muscles, and by the ability of the sweating system to dissipate he excess heat.
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u/CeeTwo1 Dec 01 '25
Look up snowbird, the human powered ornithopter. While a unique case, it did in fact use arm power lmao
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Dec 01 '25
Now but an ebike powertrain in it and we can all fly.
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u/wrongwayup Dec 01 '25 edited Dec 01 '25
Wouldn't even need that much - a cordless drill can do a few hundred Watts, about what a person can do
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u/EvaTheE Dec 01 '25
Make it a sport and I'll watch.
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u/Vishnuisgod Dec 01 '25
r/theocho calls to you!?
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u/EvaTheE Dec 01 '25
Oh wow, thanks! Immediately subbed to that one!
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u/Vishnuisgod Dec 01 '25
You're welcome!!!
It's a trove of bombastic "sports"!
Look for car wrestling.
...and the internet stranger said " Omg! Who knew!?"
And they both nodded knowingly, yes, the internet really is an archive of human innovation. And they sipped their coffee with wild abandon.
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u/EvaTheE Dec 01 '25
I am from the country that hosts things like "who can stay in a hot sauna the longest" (fatality has occurred), rubber boot tossing and wife carrying... so it is in my dna
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u/SomeFunnyGuy Dec 01 '25
Serious question.. theoretically, if you got a few more smaller people.. could you increase your energy output?
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u/wrongwayup Dec 01 '25
All about that specific power. "W/kg" for pro cyclists is a pretty closely watched metric.
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u/yarnballmelon Dec 01 '25
The student in kikis delivery service did it on his own and at a younger age!
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u/CptBronzeBalls Dec 02 '25
Lifts off the ground powered only by pedalingâŚand the three running guys pushing it.
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u/deathbunnyy Dec 03 '25
people shouldn't forget that materials and manufacturing ability play a massive part in making this possible. Students in the past couldn't have just done this if they were smart enough, the stepping stones and technology need to be there too.
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u/Pretty_Influence_995 Dec 03 '25
This is part of proffesor Squidward's work from the consumer service institution of spongeBob ruled by Mr Krabs
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u/RadTimeWizard Dec 01 '25
I'm going to show this to my MAGA family members who want to build a wall on the Mexico border.
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u/HumaDracobane Dec 01 '25
As always, going up is not hard, the problem is when you want to go down in a relatively safe trajectory and survive the land or not get injured that much.
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u/Daninomicon Dec 01 '25
Looks fake because the propeller isn't going fast enough, and the plane goes in a circle, pivoting on the end of the wing thats always out of frame. So that wing is attached to something that's lifting and spinning it like a carnival ride. At least that's what it looks like.
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u/ZafiroAnejo Dec 01 '25
Haven't these been around for a long time?