We are going to pump…you up, little drones! Soon you’ll be as robotically beefy as the “Megacopter” (feel free to say that in a buff Austrian’s accent), recently completed by a team of engineers at the University of Oslo in Norway.
The Megacopter (pictured below), took home the Guinness Book of World Records title for “heaviest payload lifted by a remote-controlled multicopter” after it flexed its rotary muscle against the surly bonds of gravity, lifting 134 pounds and 7.6 ounces more than three feet in the air for over 30 seconds.
The Megacopter took over 18 months to build, consists of an aluminum and plywood frame, and contains 48 motors and propellers. It’s operable remotely by a single person, which is no surprise considering it looks like it’s essentially eight hexacopters ringed together into a single super-sized drone.
Now, not to steal any glory away from the Megacopter (all glory to the Megacopter), but there are already other aircraft out there that are technically “drones” that can carry a lot more weight. The EHang 184 for example, flies autonomously and can carry full-sized human passengers for “up to 23 minutes at speeds up to 63 miles per hour.” And, a propeller-powered hoverboard built by a Canadian inventor, while not technically a “drone” was still able to carry its inventor over water for over 900 feet, and could probably be piloted via remote control with a few modifications.
Regardless, it’s good to see people pushing the limits of what drones can do. Perhaps some evolved form of the Megacopter will lift stranded hikers to safety, or deliver that new mattress you just bought off from Amazon. All we know for sure is that its name is Megacopter, and it will probably be the bad guy in Transformers 19.
What do you think of the Megacopter and its world-record weight-lifting abilities? Are you impressed with its numbers, or does this drone need to work on its form? Let us know in the comments section below!
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HT: Guinness Book of World Records
Images: Guinness Book of World Records