At Last! The Hover Segway!
 

Early work on the next flying Segway is progressing well, but you may have trouble getting it through a standard doorway:

http://www.flixxy.com/worlds-first-m...ulticopter.htm

In the case of failure of any of the rotors, the remaining rotors are capable of successfully guiding the machine to the crash site.



(with apologies to one of the engineers on the NASA Phoenix program)

Seems entirely appropriate, but shouldn't he have been standing up?;)

Good find. Thanks.

I sure hope there is a good safety switch on that, as I would hate to walk by one of those props when it turned on.

It is clearly a test vehicle. Can you imagine having a picnic in a field and having this land too close? It would be like looking up and seeing a food processor coming down.

All these safety issues are real, but not too much a problem, till we see it developed to a point where they would be available for sale, however.

I kind of like the idea that the primary landing pod is an exercise ball. Very ingenious.

Are those straps to keep him from falling out or stopping him from running away in terror!!!

As stable as quadrocopter+ can be, they don't crash well. My AR.Drone was no exception.

Would a quadrocopter have 4 rotors? I think this device has about 12 rotors if I counted correctly. What would that be, duodecacopter?

It has 16 props so its a hexadecicopter I think. Wonderful flying bedstead design, combination of high tech and string. The exercise ball is great but I wonder why his seat is not below the structure rather than above.

Actually, his pose looks to me as if it is very uncormfortable and unnatural.

I must have counted 3 rotors per arm (I did a quick count, clearly missing only 25% of them, lucky I don't deal with numbers for a living... No, wait, I am an electromechanical Engineer. I guess I'll blame this one on my glasses)

I too see that the sitting with that much weight above the lift as odd. I would have thought having it below or at lease some of it below would add a level of stability.

My understanding of the stability of other than fixed wing aircraft generally tend toward low weight, high lift, like a helicopter, rather than like a hovercraft. Most hovercraft get very unstable if they lift above ground effect, if they can.