So the Ken doll is a bit creepy. The wife's looking at me funny. I just got the two positionable mannequins and I think one will get an RC wingset eventually. Note the green and red spars on Ken. These are depicting what I plan for energy storage. As I've said, we will not need nor want the weight of a powered exoskeleton, rather we want to run as if on an endless trampoline, and absorb large shocks on landing. This is actually better than the trampoline analogy, since our feeble legs aren't alone in the load path. Imagine how fast you could go if you could snap off twelve foot strides! My earlier designs had more joints and complexity, but these days I'm favoring the simplicity of singular elastic elements. Wait till you see the next embodiment of the wingset; it has gotten a similar simplification. These spars are to be composite over foam cores, and their apex is the upper anchor point for a harness that crosses under the buttox. You'll feel like you are hanging from a point between your shoulders. I'm planning full sized spar and harness soon, and am pushing this first as it is a gating element: I've got to have the locomotion to live with a higher stall speed, to make the wings smaller. I haven't much interest in the gigantic wings that an ornithologist would say you need, and it's not like we're trying to land a squirrel suit, after all. We are not intending to have the kind of lift and power to start flying from a standstill anyway, which would take about 300 watts per kilogram. We want to do general transportation type flying, which will be more like 100W/Kg. We'll leave full 3D acceleration for some other day.
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