POSTED ON December 6, 2021
Perth-based aeronautics innovator Innovaero has teamed up with popular YouTube channel How Ridiculous on a spectacular project that educates, inspires and entertains.
The revolutionary ‘Batcopter’ is a stationary helicopter with large baseball-type bats for rotors, and features a meticulously timed air compression power system that propels balls up into its spinning ‘bats’.
How Ridiculous will use their new Batcopter to put to the test a range of engineering concepts while satiating its audience demand for content that pushes both creative and physical boundaries.
Innovaero Founder Mike von Bertouch says the unlikely partnership was forged through the shared values of innovation and investing in human capital growth.
“From its inception, Innovaero has been an enterprise where the continuous development of skills and talent is fundamental to success. I really think this project will inspire other organisations to step out of their business-as-usual professional development approach, and in the process create a sense of excitement for a career in STEM among young people,” Mike said.
Brett Stanford, Co-Founder of How Ridiculous, says the Batcopter is likely to feature in some of the channel’s biggest experiments to date.
“We are always looking for bigger and better things to challenge us. We dreamed of having a machine that could really ‘belt balls out of the park,’ further than anyone had done before. What began as a discussion about a gigantic bat evolved into something that resembled a helicopter – and Batcopter was born,” Brett said.
The project involved modelling ballistics of various balls, taking into account varying aerodynamic forces, system power requirements, drive train elements, ball-bat impact forces, as well as the frame structural analysis. Unveiled on 4 December 2021 to 7 million subscribers of How Ridiculous, it has already ammassed over 1 milion views in the first 48 hours.
For junior engineer Joshua Grosser, who was assigned a key design role, working on the Batcopter was an opportunity to engage with the full design and engineering process, while learning to use STEM to solve real-world problems.
“The culture at Innovaero provides a great environment for learning and cultivating new ideas amongst peers of all backgrounds and experience. Personally, working on this project has fostered the development of engineering management skills that are often unattainable until much later in one’s career.”
“Being involved in each stage, from preliminary design to final commissioning, has furthered my understanding of what is actually involved in delivering a product from start to finish, and the less obvious challenges that can arise in the process,” Joshua said.
With a vision to ensure the ultimate client experience for every project through innovative design, engineering and service, Innovaero’s award-winning team deliver world-class capabilities in aeronautical product development and manufacturing to commercial entities and sovereign industrial capabilities to government across Australia.
Watch the Batcopter in action below.
