Achieving the dream. Making a flying car
A University of Southampton engineering research student is planning to turn science fiction into fact. Witold Mielniczek has invented a flying car.
He has applied for patents to protect his ideas for the hybrid car-helicopter, called B, and is using the online crowd source funder www.kickstarter.com to turn his dream into reality. Witold aims to raise £86,500 and has already attracted more than £60,000 of funding to take the project to a manufacturer. He has demonstrated that his first remote-controlled prototype can both tackle difficult terrain and take to the air using propellers built into its four large wheels.
"At the moment, B is an amazing toy which is virtually unstoppable, capable of transitioning between ground and air and performing tricks otherwise impossible to achieve," explains Witold. "But it has far greater potential. A full scale version could carry people and even have rescue and humanitarian applications."
Witold is studying for a PhD in Computational Engineering and Design, researching novel propulsion system for small aircraft. He was the design engineer for the UK's HALO entry in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) UAVforge contest in the USA for unmanned aerial vehicles. It was the most successful of the 140 international entries.