Watch this man fly in his home-made “super-drone”

From time to time we find projects on the internet that make us go “why haven’t I ever though of that?”. This is the case of the Swarm Manned Aerial Vehicle Multirotor Super-Drone, a drone – if we can even call it that – with 54 rotors capable of carrying a person up to 150kg. The video showing the super drone in operation has already reach over 3 million views on Youtube.

Posted by YouTube user gasturbine101, the Swarm was a real engineering feat to build. One of the sacrifices made in order to carry so much weight is compromising its autonomy. It can stay only 10 minutes in the air, since adding more batteries would make it too heavy to lift off. The vehicle consumes about 22KW of energy.

The drone is controlled by the passenger himself, who sits in a kind of protected cabin with reinforced plastic. The material is responsible for ensuring the passenger’s safety in the event of a propeller accidentally detaching, in addition to giving it more stability in the event of forced landings. Building the Swarm was a £6,000 investment including all its materials, rotors and batteries. Because of its weight, The Swarm cannot reach great heights or speeds, but at least this guy’s dream of flying his own helicopter came true.