Blueprint

GENERAL AVIATION

'Perching’ eVTOL unveiled

South African start-up Phractyl has revealed this concept for a nature-inspired electric personal air vehicle, the Macrobat, which features bird-like ‘legs’ as landing gear. Phractyl believes that this biomimicry design, with tracks as ‘feet’, would be perfectly suited to Africa’s more austere terrain where traditional infrastructure is lacking. As well as a personal air vehicle, Phractyl is also aiming for Macrobat to deliver medicine, blood and humanitarian aid to inaccessible areas, as well as agriculture by dispensing pesticides. Beyond the air vehicle itself, Phractyl plans to stimulate a wider aerospace ecosystem in Africa, including crowd-sourced weather reports, battery farms and STEM education.

Remotely piloted
Phractyl explains that the two-seat Macrobat would either be flown by a single pilot with one passenger, remotely piloted with two passengers or operated as an unpiloted cargo drone.

Tiltwing design
Like a bird coming into land, the entire wing and propellers pivot to slow down and transition to the hover. Rather than a pure eVTOL, Phractyl describes this mode as electric near-vertical take-off and landing (eNVTOL) which also allows take-off from unprepared surfaces.

Shake a leg
The unusual undercarriage and its tracked ‘feet’ allow landing on uneven and unstable surfaces. The landing gear retracts backwards in flight to reduce drag.

Specifications
Passengers 1 (plus pilot)
Range 150km
Maximum speed 180km/h
Payload 150kg