Drones that deliver aid.
We’re students at the University of Twente. Every year a new team builds an autonomous aircraft that can fly aid to places a truck can’t reach.
We build it ourselves.
The skin is 3D printed, and this year we made our own carbon tubes as well, from prepreg cured at 100 °C. Then we wire it up and fly it.
Three motors, and two of them tilt.
It takes off like a multicopter. Then the two front motors tilt forward, the CH10 wing takes the weight and the rear motor switches off. Tilting the front motors is also how it turns in a hover, so it doesn’t need a fourth.
It drops 3 litres of water by itself.
A Pixhawk running ArduPilot flies the route. Over the target a servo opens the tank, and the water is out in under three and a half seconds.
Zephyros is aircraft number eight.
We’ve built one every season since 2019. This one came home from the 2026 UAS Challenge with the Rebuild Award.
Each season ends at the IMechE UAS Challenge in the UK.
Every university team there brings an aircraft built for the same aid-delivery mission. We design ours for it and build it in our own workshop on campus.
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8
aircraft built
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7
competition awards
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26
students
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6
departments
Every aircraft we’ve built
Each team picks up where the last one stopped, including whatever went wrong.
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Toothless
The founding team built Toothless, an octa-plane VTOL, and entered the UAS Challenge for the first time.
- < 10 kg
- 2.0 m
2019 Debut More about Toothless -
VAU2
The second team worked on several aircraft projects and earned Drone Team Twente’s first Innovation Award.
- < 7 kg
- 1.90 m
2020 Innovation Award More about VAU2 -
Phoenix
The Phoenix team continued work on the hybrid VTOL layout during a largely remote competition year.
- 7 kg
- 2.0 m
2021 Most Promising Team More about Phoenix -
Thunderbird
Thirteen students built Thunderbird, and the team also did STEM outreach that year.
- 10 kg (incl. payload)
- 1.90 m
- 20+ km range
2022 Media & Engagement Award More about Thunderbird -
Nekbeth
The team took Nekbeth, a fast and largely 3D-printed VTOL aircraft, to the UAS Challenge.
2023 Competed More about Nekbeth -
Freebird
The team cut the motor count to four and used tilting front rotors for hover, transition, and forward flight.
- 9.5 kg
- 3.0 m
- 45 minutes
2024 Most Promising Team More about Freebird -
Nightingale
Nightingale completed the team’s first fully autonomous competition mission and returned with two awards.
- < 10 kg
- 3.2 m
2025 Best Design and Best Media & Engagement More about Nightingale -
Zephyros
Zephyros is a fixed-wing VTOL tricopter, and the first of our aircraft with carbon tubes we made ourselves.
- < 10 kg
- 2.8 m
- 15+ min
2026 Rebuild Award More about Zephyros
Competition results
At the IMechE UAS Challenge the flight is only part of the score. Judges also look at the design, safety, autonomy and outreach, so some of our awards were won on the ground.
Official results-
2026 Zephyros Rebuild Award
It scored 356 points in total.
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2025 Nightingale Best DesignBest Media & Engagement
Nightingale won Best Design and Best Media & Engagement, placed first in documentation, and finished eighth overall. It also completed our first fully autonomous competition flight and earned the highest VTOL score of the 2025 challenge.
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2024 Freebird Most Promising Team
Freebird received the Most Promising Award for its tilting front rotors. The design reduced the motor count from five to four while retaining vertical take-off and landing.
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2023 Nekbeth Competed
Nekbeth brought a largely 3D-printed VTOL airframe and a 120 km/h design cruise speed to the 2023 challenge.
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2022 Thunderbird Media & Engagement Award
Thunderbird won the Media & Engagement Award for the team’s work with schools and local students, and finished 17th out of 32 teams overall.
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2021 Phoenix Most Promising Team
Phoenix received the Most Promising Team Award for its hybrid VTOL configuration, which combined fixed-wing flight with vertical take-off and landing.
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2020 VAU2 Innovation Award
VAU2 earned the team’s first competition prize: first in Innovation. It also placed third in Media, seventh in Business Proposition, and eighth in Design out of 38 teams.
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2019 Toothless Debut
Our first competition aircraft placed third in Design, sixth in Media, tenth in Business Proposition, and 19th out of 32 teams overall.
This year’s team
A few of us work on the aircraft full-time. Most fit it around their studies, part-time or as a minor for credit.
Plans the season and handles the budget, sponsors, media and the competition entry.
Designs and builds the structure, including the carbon tubes we now make ourselves.
Does the wiring, the flight controller setup and the software around it.
Picks the airfoils and sizes the wing, the tail and the motors.
Runs Dronobox, our build-a-drone workshops for students.
- Andrii Yevmenchuck Engineer · Part-time
Turns the CAD into real parts and makes sure they fit together.
Sponsor the next aircraft
A student team can’t pay for an aircraft on its own. Money helps most, but materials, machine time and engineers willing to answer our questions all end up in it too.
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Funding
Parts, tooling, the trip to the UK and the competition entry.
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Materials and parts
Carbon, filament, electronics and motors that end up in the aircraft.
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Facilities
Workshop time, machines and somewhere to test and fly.
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Expertise
Advice from engineers who’ve solved the same problems before.
Our partners
Between them they pay for parts, lend us machines and answer our questions. Thank you.
- Zephyros wins the Rebuild Award It scored 356 points at the 2026 UAS Challenge at BMFA Buckminster.
- Zephyros revealed We showed the 2026 aircraft in public for the first time, in the Waaier on campus.
- Nightingale flies the full mission Our first fully autonomous competition flight. It finished eighth overall and won two awards.