Zefiro Student Team

Zefiro Student Team is a group of students from Politecnico di Torino in Turin, Italy. The team designs, builds and tests drones. It focuses on electric propulsion and autonomous flight systems. The name stands for Zonal E-mobility Flying Innovative Rotorcrafts.

The team began on 10 July 2024. A group of friends who study aerospace engineering decided to start a team that works on sustainable mobility with drones. Its members now come from several engineering fields, and many study aerospace engineering.

Zefiro works on vertical take-off and landing vehicles, known as VTOL. It builds prototypes for urban air mobility. It wants to tackle the technical and design challenges of advanced air mobility. Its aim is for drones and other VTOL vehicles to fit safely and efficiently into cities. The team also stresses sustainability, lower emissions and a good fit with city infrastructure.

Its main project is VESPA, an unmanned aircraft system. The VESPA Mk1 is an agricultural eVTOL, built entirely by the team. It showed the VESPA structure to the public for the first time at the Turin Aero Club Open Day on 23 May 2026. The first VESPA flight test is planned for 14 December 2026, after months of design work, calculations and simulations.

The team joins competitions and events. It took part in the VFS Student Design Competition on hydrogen-electric VTOL, which Airbus sponsored, in May 2025. In March 2026, it joined the Dronitaly exhibition in Bologna and Politecnico di Torino's orientation fair for new students. In April 2026, it joined the Technology Biennial in Turin. On 26 September 2026, it took part in the European Researchers' Night at Castello del Valentino. Visitors tried the prototype on a flight simulator.

The team also joined a seminar with academics on how to present scientific data. Its lab is at Politecnico di Torino. People can contact the team about partnerships, technical questions and joining.

Services

• Drone design
• Electric propulsion research
• Autonomous flight systems
• VTOL prototypes
• Urban air mobility prototypes
• VESPA unmanned aircraft system