BMW has now unveiled one of the most remarkable inventions of the 21st century, a battery-powered wingsuit that allows individuals to fly through the air as if they were a bird. Created by BMW's 'I division', the suit allows occupants to travel at speeds of up to 186mph.
The German company has now released an amazing new video of Austrian stuntman Peter Salzmann test-flying the new suit. To test fly the new device Salzmann and the BMW team first tried it out in a wind-tunnel and then headed to the Swiss Alps for the first ever 'real-life' test flight. After jumping from a helicopter hovering at 10,000 feet, Salzmann then conducted a short journey and made a safe landing via parachute.
While the flying looks extremely like 'wingsuit free-jumping', in which individuals jump from planes or from high cliff edges and then swoop down in specially designed gear, the new BMW invention is entirely different as it is actually powered via an engine run on a 50-volt lithium battery.
The battery then powers 2 carbon-fibre propellers capable of 25,000 revolutions per minute, giving a thrust of around 20 horsepower, more than enough to lift a human being through the air and propel them at high-speeds.
It was Salzmann himself who came up with the idea of the powered wingsuit and he helped design the suit itself, while the BMW team focused on building the engine. He said the idea came to him in 2017 while working as a designer of wingsuits for free-jumping. He said:
"At the time, I was developing suits for skydiving and basejumping with a friend and basejumping mentor. In a relaxed atmosphere one evening after a day of testing, we threw out lots of ideas about how we could improve performance. One of them was a supporting motor – and it's an idea I just couldn't shake. I found the idea of being able to jump from my local mountain wearing the wingsuit and land in my garden fascinating."
BMW does not at present wish to scale up production of the new powered wingsuits and instead will only be producing a few for trained extreme sports enthusiasts and stunt-people. However, the design itself could, in the long-run, come to be the basis for much more widely used transportation technologies.
COMMENTS