A bonus capability

Air-Cushion Mode

A permanent flexible skirt lets Flying Squirrel settle onto and skim over water, wetland, snow, or open ground, using the same four corner fans that control it in flight. Useful at the margins — but the core pitch is flight mode, not this.

No extra hardware

The same skirt, the same fans

The permanent flexible skirt seals a cushion of air beneath the vehicle without needing lift from the main rotors at all. The four corner fans that provide thrust in flight mode now vector for holonomic control — moving sideways, rotating in place, and steering.

Normal cruise in this mode is roughly 30–50 km/h, with short bursts up to 50–60 km/h. Nothing about the vehicle changes to enable this — no folding mechanism, no separate configuration, no additional equipment carried just for it.

Flying Squirrel in air-cushion mode on a street

Flying Squirrel in air-cushion mode over wetland — Terrain a wheeled vehicle, a boat, or a runway aircraft cannot use.

Where it earns its place

Continuing where flight isn't the right tool

Open wetland, marsh, and swamp have no roads and no clear water channel for a boat — a wheeled vehicle sinks, and a runway aircraft has nowhere to land. Flying Squirrel reaches a site like this by flight, then continues under fan power in air-cushion mode, without a second landing or a change of vehicle.

See more use cases