El premio Igor Sikorsky

(Leído en la Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_I._Sikorsky_Human_Powered_Helicopter_Competition)

The Igor I. Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition was established in 1980 by the American Helicopter Society (AHS) International. The award, the AHS Sikorsky Prize, was given for the first human powered helicopter (HPH) to meet a set of extremely challenging flight requirements. In summary, the requirements to win the AHS Sikorsky Prize included a flight duration of 60 seconds and reaching an altitude of 3 meters (9.8 ft), with the center point of the aircraft hovering over a 10-by-10 meter (32.8-by-32.8 ft) square. 

The AHS competition was named in honor of Igor Sikorsky, one of the founders of the technical society. AHS initiated the prize purse at $10,000, but soon raised it to $25,000. 

In the history of the prize, dozens of teams have designed and built human-powered helicopters, although only five of them made it airborne. 

In 2013, 33 years after the competition was established, the award was officially declared won when AeroVelo's Atlas human-powered helicopter conducted a flight that met all the requirements of the AHS International competition, and received the $250,000 prize. 

AeroVelo, comprising students and graduates of the University of Toronto, began flight testing its larger Atlas quad rotor HPH on August 28, 2012. 

On 13 June 2013, AeroVelo flew its Atlas HPH and submitted data from the flight to the AHS International Human Powered Helicopter Competition Committee. After the panel of vertical flight technical experts reviewed the data from the flight, AHS International announced that the flight had met the requirements of the competition and that AeroVelo had officially won.

During the 13 June 2013 flight, occurring at 12:43PM EDT, the team managed to keep Atlas in the air for 64.11 seconds, reach a peak altitude of 3.3 meters and drift no more than 9.8 meters from the starting point.