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The Canadian Human-Powered Rocket Bike Set to Break Speed Records

From human powered helicopter to human powered rocket bike.
Image. AeroVelo

As if building a working, human-powered helicopter wasn't enough, a team of Canadian engineers is now trying to break the world cycling speed record with their very own rocket-shaped, human-powered road bike.

Looking a little like a giant bullet on wheels, the AeroVelo team developed a high-speed, aerodynamic bicycle they call Eta, which they believe is capable of topping the current unassisted, unpaced cycling record of 133.8 km/h.

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Manned by a single rider—Todd Reichert, who is the same guy that piloted the helicopter—the bike is guided through video monitors inside the cockpit. AeroVelo says they expect Reichert to max out at a whopping one horsepower—huge output for a cyclist—while pedaling in a reclined, recumbent position. Reichert is no athletic slouch: He's a national level speed skater and cyclist and has been training rigourously for the sprint.

“The bike looks a lot more like a rocket than a normal bike,” said Cameron Robertson, one of the team co-founders. “The pilot is recumbent, so quite laid back… This new bike, just like our research vehicle from last year, actually doesn’t even have a canopy that you can see out of. It gives users cameras to produce images for the pilot. It’s sort of like a flying video game on a heads up display.”

Using a combination of computational fluid dynamics and optimal aerodynamic shaping techniques to make the carbon fiber shell, the team has reduced the drag of the bike to a claimed 100 times less than streamliner cars. Add to that specialty wheels and advanced testing to determine the ideal position for Reichert to sit and pedal, and the team is a contender for the world record.

The AeroVelo team, comprised of University of Toronto engineering students and professional engineers, plans to debut the bike at the World Human-Powered Speed Challenge (WHPSC) in Battle Mountain, Nevada this September. Robertson said the team is inspired to beat the record to overcome an “impossible effort” and inspire creative thinking about old technology like bikes.

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Rendering of the Eta bike model.

While the bike is so fast it could throw up the same sorts of speeds that highways require, there's no way it would survive a collision, and visibility is low. For that reason, Robertson thinks it can only be used for bike specific routes at the moment, and wouldn’t be safe enough for a bike trip across the 401.

What’s more impressive is the potential future applications of the model. Given a consumer spin, Robertson believes the design may garner the attention of average bikers looking for alternative transportation options, especially in an age of inflated gas prices.

“There are transferable technologies and the bike itself could potentially be commercialized and sold,” said Robertson. “In a world where Google is building self-driving cars, that’s the kind of world these bikes can more conceivably integrate. If you don’t have to worry about collisions nearly as frequently, that cuts down the biggest infrastructural barriers to the use of these bikes.”

His team is even looking into creating a self-driving element to the bike for future races. That way, as Robertson puts it, “that allows the human to really focus on power output.”

“If you take a bike that is powered solely by the human, that is really only 300 watts, which is the power of a cordless drill. So if you do start to look at energy storage and literally just plug in a battery, you can have a bike that can go highway speeds at 140 kilometers an hour,” said Robertson.

For now, you won't see the average hipster riding a fixie picking up the Eta for their trans-Canada bike tour. But someday, when autonomous vehicles rule the roads and people want a video game experience for their bike route, the Eta could just make it. Either way, we'll see in September if Robertson and his team will succeed in their lofty goal.