Richard Browning’s father Michael was an engineer and inventor with a passion for flying. He inspired his son’s career choices and eventually served as an inspiration for one of Richard’s best achievements: a personal jet suit. In Browning’s TED Talk How I built a jet suit, the inventor discusses the lessons learned and gives a brief demonstration of personal flight technology.
Brownings’ big idea was to build the perfect mix of technology around the human body to see if solo flight could be achieved. The first step was buying a micro gas turbine and testing it out, which later turned to two turbines and then four. Running the calculations showed that six turbines, two on each arm and one on each leg, was enough to fly Browning around the test site. Eventually through trial and error and ‘lots of falling over’ a successful six second flight occurred.
The suit has been refined several times – at the end of April it was estimated that flight time could be up to ten uninterrupted minutes. An exoskeleton is now built into the suit to replace the Tupperware box that previously helped to route wires and fuel lines, and the suit is code-named Daedalus. Browning says that the controls become intuitive eventually, like riding a bike, and as the pilot he looks at his target and begins to move there.
One long term goal for this flying suit is for Browning to fly and dock on a moving aircraft, but he acknowledges that there is much work to be done before that dream is achieved. Browning is a charming and witty speaker and this talk is short on technical details but big on inspirational ideas. The suit project focused on iterative design and trial and error once the calculations looked promising. A highly stylized launch video of Daedalus with some corporate branding is available at Red Bull’s website. This is another great entry into the personal flight field, and sadly another reminder that the idea of us riding around with rocket backpacks still requires a few decades to become reality.