DroneTeam Twente

Drone Team Twente is a student team at the University of Twente. Each year a new team designs, builds and flies an autonomous VTOL aircraft meant to carry aid to places a truck cannot reach. The team builds the aircraft in its own workshop on campus. Every season ends at the IMechE UAS Challenge in the United Kingdom.

The current aircraft is Zephyros, built for 2026. It is a fixed-wing VTOL tricopter with a mass under 10 kilograms and a carbon frame under 1 kilogram. It takes off like a multicopter. Then the two front motors tilt forward, the wing carries the weight and the rear motor switches off. Each front motor gave 7.9 kilograms of thrust on the test stand.

The aircraft uses a Pixhawk flight controller running ArduPilot. It carries a 3 litre water tank and drops the water by itself over the target in under three and a half seconds. Zephyros won the Rebuild Award at the 2026 challenge.

The team makes much of the aircraft itself. The skin is 3D printed, and this year the team also made its own carbon tubes from prepreg cured at 100 degrees Celsius.

The site lists eight aircraft, one for each season since 2019. They run from Toothless, an octa-plane VTOL that finished 19th of 32 teams, to Zephyros. The team reports seven competition awards. The 2025 to 2026 team has 26 students from six departments. The site invites companies and others to partner with the team.