Quadcopter drones are everywhere these days—Amazon will soon be delivering our packages with them, and Microsoft is trying to combat malaria with them. There’s even a sport based around racing them, in the style of a first-person video game, with participants on the ground getting a drone’s-eye view of the world. But for all the people flying drones these days, there has been no way to actually fly on a drone.
Until now.
The contraption comes from Thorstin Crijns, a Danish software engineer.
Rather like the Wright brothers’ first flight more than a century ago, Crijns’ quadcopter does not stay in the air very long. But it proves his concept: that a drone-shaped aircraft can theoretically lift a person off the ground. It’s not exactly like the flying cars that science-fiction movies have been promising us for years—it looks more like a go-kart attached to a set of ceiling fans—but it’s a start.