World’s First Manned Electric Multicopter Takes Flight

Why settle for one giant propeller when you can have 16, sharply whirling small ones? Seated atop what looks to be an exercise ball, physicist and mechanical engineer Thomas Senkel recently became the first man to pilot an electric powered multicopter.

He took his 16-propeller, e-volo multicopter for a 1-and-a-half minute test flight in southwest Germany.

[via EarthTechling]