Welcome to the Gamera
Human-Powered Helicopter Project
For Gamera updates, visit the Team's Twitter feed
Above: Gamera II Team Soars to New Heights with Flights Over Nine Feet!
The team also surpassed the Sikorsky Prize requirement of a 60-second flight
and has achieved
a Certified World Record of 65.1 seconds!
Above: Video summary of all of the team's progress up until now,
and a layout of what they are currently working on.
The team is currently designing a control system to remain within the required 10m x 10m box during flight,
and that we will be flying in late winter/early spring 2013 with our sights set on the AHS Sikorsky Prize.
FAI world record certification website
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Learn More Gamera II (2012) Gamera II Main Information Sheet (pdf) Gamera II Focus Sheets: Gamera I (2011) |
The Gamera Project is a student design challenge inspired by the AHS Sikorsky Prize and involving students of the Clark School of Engineering and faculty advisors from the the Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center in the Clark School's Department of Aerospace Engineering.
The team flew Gamera II, the latest project, in June, August and November of 2012. It is a lighter and stronger refinement of Gamera I, designed for greater flight duration. Gamera II was sanctioned to make an official flight duration record attempt by the National Aeronautic Association (NAA). On August 9, 2012, NAA announced that on June 21, 2012, Gamera II set a new official U.S. record for flight duration of 49.9 seconds. The association is submitting the flight for world-record review by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.
Gamera I flew in the summer of 2011, setting world records for flight duration at 11.4 seconds.
More videos:
8-foot-high flight, 9.4-foot flight and ABC News video
Special Thanks
The team wishes to thank Dean Darryll Pines for sponsoring the Gamera Project, Inderjit Chopra and V.T. Nagaraj for serving as advisors, other human-powered helicopter projects around the world for providing inspiration and competition, and the thousands of well-wishers who continue to cheer us on.
