Hi guys,
thanks for your quick replies. I guess that making anything akin to a helicopter, with rotors in all directions feels a little bit like cheating. What I had in mind was more of an Airplane which can do a zero speed landing. Perhaps more like a bird.

We have plenty of high tech fabrication technology and manual skills in our workshop, so making it shouldn't be too hard. What is hard is working out the concept, modelling the aerodynamics, designing the mechanisms, working out what to sense and how to sense it, and writing the control software.

I'd love to hear any more ideas people have about slowing a plane to zero speed both horizontally and vertically at ground level. It is aerodynamically and energetically feasible? Maybe it would need to flap the wings once to kill the final bit of speed, while providing lift?

Hugo