Gamera: A Human Powered Helicopter

Gamera: A Human Powered Helicopter – In Pursuit of an Aviation Milestone is an engineering history of the human powered helicopter creatively designed, skillfully built, and courageously flown by students of the University of Maryland. A majority of students were from the Department of Aerospace Engineering and the A. James Clark School of Engineering, joined by enthusiastic volunteers from other departments. Together, they conquered an ambitious aviation milestone: vertical flight by human power. The project was spread over four years and involved the efforts of over 100 undergraduate and 30 graduate students.

Four distinct versions of the aircraft (Gamera I, Gamera II, Gamera IIXR, and Gamera IID) evolved during the program with increasing refinements in design, fabrication, and testing. Each version incorporated improvements that helped to obtain better performance, lower weight, and skilled innovations for improving the stability of the helicopter. Gamera still holds world records for human powered flight endurance of 97 seconds and height of 10.5 ft, approved by the FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, World Aeronautical Federation), as well the Guinness Book of World Records.

The Gamera project excited the imagination of a great number of people and was covered by several national media outlets including print, television, and social media. The Gamera project was subsequently transformed from a human powered helicopter to a solar powered helicopter.

This technical history is accessible to a general engineering audience at the college junior level. The concepts of helicopter aerodynamics, aeromechanics, and composite structures are explained using a minimum of jargon, without oversimplifying the explanations.