Digby Symons: University of Canterbury Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering on

Kiwi ingenuity at its finest coming out of the University of Canterbury. 

A group of engineering students believe they’ve set a New Zealand human-powered land speed record.  

Their three-wheeler, named Mako, hit 82.6km/h – entirely by pedal power.  

The record is expected to be confirmed by the International Human Powered Vehicle Association within a month.  

Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Digby Symons told Mike Hosking it was done as part of a final year project in the department. 

He says some projects have students working on problems that come from companies, but some, like this one, have the students addressing a challenge they set themselves. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We've got a reminder this country does actually produce a

(00:02):
next generation of the bright and the brilliant. We've got
a group of engineering students who reckon. They've sit a
new New Zealand human powered land speed record. They've got
a three wheeler. It hit eighty two point six k's
entirely with Peodle pound now the record's expected to be
confirmed within a month. Digby Simons is an associate professor
at the University of Canterbury who's been working on all

(00:22):
of this and he's with us Digby morning, good morning.
If it's eighty two point six, what's it beat the
old record by.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Well, it depends what you're looking at exactly. I was
just looking at up this morning. So Sam Dakin is
an Olympic cyclist and he's got the current flying two
hundred meter time trial record and his speed I think
is seventy six kilometers an hour if you work it out.

(00:52):
But that's an official UCI cycling record where you have
to ride an upright bicycle with a sort of diamond
frame configuration. But obviously Sam's an Olympic athlete, so this
is a different category of vehicles. This is where the
only only rule is that your human power only. But

(01:14):
other than that, there are no restrictions on what type
of position you ride in and whether you have a
firing around you.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
So just to be fear, you've got what I would
loosely term a bullet shaped machine. IT'SO is it zero
or grunt? The bike should go first.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
It's absolutely aerodynamics. So if you think about a standard bicycle,
and what's important is the most important is the drag area,
and a standard bicycle is probably about zero point two
meters squared for a drag area. This bike is down
around about nort point not three, So it's it's at

(01:53):
least five maybe six or even more times more aerodynamics.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Not point not three. Yeah, me are really good cars
two to two or two three or two four or
something like that.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah, which is obviously a much bigger vehicle. So what
that means is compared to a normal bike, you could
go at the same speed, but you don only need
a fifth or one sixth of the power, or if
you put in the same power, you could go almost
twice as fasts.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Like this makes university sound fun, doesn't it. It's like
you look forward to getting into this and doing something
fun like this.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Oh absolutely, it's been a fantastic project and it so
this was done as by the final year project at
the University of Category Mechanical Engineering Department, and a lot
of our projects are students. Most of our projects are
students working on problems that come from companies, but some
of our projects are student led and the students addressing

(02:54):
a challenge that they set themselves. So this was an
example of that. The students wanted us beat the land
speed record.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Good on you, well, I wish you the very bad stone.
Well will Stone touch with you and when you get
a confirm that'll be fantastic. Look it up. By the way,
it's all at the University of Canterbury. It's a cool
looking machine and it's it's I don't know what you
do with it at the end of It's like those
school projects, you know, when you do a school project
and you thing's really cool until of course mum goes,

(03:26):
where do you think that's going?

Speaker 3 (03:27):
And of course when do you just keep it as
your normal bike? I mean I could have done that
on a Friday when I was biking from Lymington to
Cambridge high right across Cambridge from Lymington. Yeah, with the
saxophone on the back, the school bag strapped on top
of that problem.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
You couldn't have hitded in this thing.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
And then a guitar strapped to my back as well.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
That's crazy. Too many musical instruments. So do you know
Arena Williams, she's into music.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
I didn't cry about it. I just got on with
it and band practice started at eight am. I had
to be there.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
I ate even in winter when it was cold. Did
you listen.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
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