Romanian inventor and engineer Razvan Sabie is famous for his 2019 flying saucer. He has quite a unique design of VTOLs.
It’s called the Mad Bat and it’s designed to scale from small drones to personal aircraft, to air taxis, and much more. All of this is made possible due to its tail-sitter.
The Mad Bat applies an unprecedented technique by using a heavily modified tail-sitter. The design has a very simple form of VTOL aircraft like an airplane with enough propulsion to be able to point its nose straight up and hang in the air, but it can also come down and softly land on its tail.
However, tail-sitters would require the passenger to be placed pointing straight upwards or lying on his/her stomach.
Interestingly, the Mad Bat manages to use a tail-sitter and provide a horizontal seat. The company makes its tail-sitting airframe into a swinging cabin that’s reinforced by heavy battery packs that always keep it upright.
This means that as the electric VTOL flies forward, its cabin stays level. T
The Mad Bat has four sets of landing gear on the bottom edges of its wings along with another set under the cabin that allows it to take off and land like a traditional aircraft. The design is also accident-proof. In case of a mishap, the electric VTOL can deploy a paraglider that allows the aircraft to land smoothly.
Also, the model does not have complex mechanical tilting systems adding to its efficiency, and it uses the same motors for lift as for cruise. On the ground, it has a small footprint making it convenient to use as it can be parked nearly anywhere.
Sabie has already built a prototype to test the model.