Human-powered water vehicle aims to break world speed record

TORONTO: An ambitious group of students in Canada is developing a new human-powered water vehicle which it hopes will break a 23-year-old world speed record.

The students will attempt to reach a blistering pace of 37 km/h with the vehicle called Leviathan, breaking the current speed record of 34 km/h set by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Cambridge, in 1991.

The mechanical engineering students at the University of Sherbrooke, in Canada, have been working for the past two years to develop the speedy craft, which will make its world record attempt next year, 'LiveScience' reported.

"The vehicle itself has to be perfected for both aerodynamic and hydrodynamic performance," said Christian Blais, a student at the University of Sherbrooke.

The team comprises of 13 students, each of whom is responsible for one of the vehicle's 13 subsystems.

The vehicle is powered completely by human pedalling, which drives a propeller in the water. The twin-hulled craft resembles a catamaran, but underneath each hull is a submerged wing, or hydrofoil, the report said.

The front hydrofoils are controlled by an onboard computer to keep the boat stable, a feature that previous human-powered watercraft lacked, Blais said.

The pilot can also change the angle of the propeller blades to optimise them for different speeds, he said.