Human powered flapping flight wont come out of gliding or
ornithopters but out of the incremental exaggeration of adaptive
winged, full crawl stroke, standing take off, figure-eighting of the
arms to cover the full space possible around the body. Once wings
are developed for the upper body this
way, a set of wings based on
this functionality can be made for the legs to allow four winged
flight.
Development should start via aerodynamic juggling sleeves.
I have noticed while learning to juggle in still air, that the
constant
hand motion creates a vortex ring around the body, because you
are
pushing air up by catching, throwing and cycling your hands. It is
an
inefficient process though and could be optimized if semi-rigid
aerodynamic sleeves were worn.
By filming the paths of the sleeve tips and incrementally shaping
them so that they are as adaptive as possible and scoop the most
air
possible, by watching the video in slow motion and then adding
material, an optimal vortex can be achieved. By then eventually
losing the balls and simply designing the wings to support full
windmilling of the arms rather than just cycling of the hands, an
optimal wing shape can be achieved.
Adding weighted tips to the wings to achieve leverage would be a
way to increase torque, as would adding energy storing gyroscopes
at these weighted points at the ends of the wings.
All told, you may achieve human flapping flight through the
judicious
development of a pair of aerodynamic juggling sleeves.
I guess a midway step would be to use the juggling sleeves to keep
those juggling handkerchiefs floating in the gusts of judiciously
sculpted air above your scooping sleeves.