Tests Prove Da Vinci’s Helicopter Design Can Fly

Leonardo Da Vinci’s Aerial Screw. (Photo: Museo Nazionale Scienza/Wikimedia Commons) When you look at sketches of Leonardo da Vinci’s Aerial Screw, it’s easy to doubt the contraption would ever make it off the ground. After all, its corkscrew-shaped blade looks nothing like the propellers found on today’s aircraft. But a grad student at the University of Maryland has shown that with a touch of modern engineering, da Vinci’s 15th century invention is more plausible than not.

Austin Prete, a member of the University of Maryland’s engineering team, first began working on the Aerial Screw’s contemporary redesign as part of a helicopter design competition in 2019. The team ended up submitting the revamped aircraft’s first rendition, called Elico, in 2020, subsequently winning first place just in time for the 500th anniversary of da Vinci’s death. 

Despite the fact that the engineering team’s prototype could theoretically carry at least one 60kg passenger, fly at least 20 meters, and land safely, Prete wasn’t done with the Aerial Screw’s redesign. He spent the following year or so developing Crimson Spin, a quadcopter drone that shares more similarities with modern smaller aircraft than da Vinci’s original design.

Crimson Spin. (Photo: Austin Prete/University of Maryland)

Crimson Spin takes da Vinci’s corkscrew design and multiplies it by four. The Archimedes screw-inspired wings push against the air in order to take flight. The wings’ movement creates a vortex on the outer rim of the aerial screw, much like delta-wing aircraft. According to Prete, this translates into a cleaner lift with less dust and grit blowing around the drone—a problem most vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft face even today.

Because they’re made of plastic (instead of wood or leather, like da Vinci had to work with) and are powered by compact energy sources such as batteries and electric motors (versus good old-fashioned hand cranks), Crimson Spin’s wings prove far more feasible than those drawn up centuries ago. While it would have been impressive to maintain da Vinci’s intended single-wing design, such a feat would have absorbed far more time and resources than were available to Prete and his team. 

“I was absolutely surprised it worked,” Prete told CNET. Prete showed off Crimson Spin at the Vertical Flight Society’s 2022 Transformative Vertical Flight conference in San Jose last week. 

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