Ducted fan vehicles haven’t exactly caught on yet but they look like tons of fun. Remember the Ducted Fan Scooter we featured earlier this year? Rich Olson from Nothing Labs has built this Ducted Fan Bike, it uses 3 ducted fans that are mounted to the rear of a bike, some controls on the handlebars are used to interface with an arduino. The arduino then controls the fan speed controllers. He got a speed of around 8.5 MPH, I think now that the proof of concept is done a unit with significantly more power should be the next step!
“The 3 EDF’s I got are rated for about 2 lbs thrust each when run at 12v (so maybe 6lbs thrust total). The specs say 20-40 amps. Normally the motor controllers are connected to a receiver – but I wanted something a little less cumbersome. So – I rigged up an Arduino to generate a PWM signal – and tossed together a little control panel.”
