TU Delft MAVLab (Netherlands) DelFly (II / Micro / Explorer / Nimble) (1)

TU Delft MAVLab (Netherlands) DelFly (II / Micro / Explorer / Nimble) (2)

Not soldResearch series. The commercial descendant is the Flapper Nimble+.

Not for sale (research)Not programmableFlapping-wing MAVOnboard cameraTailless Nimble (2018)

Not soldShipping: Not sold. Not sold. See Flapper Nimble+ for the commercial version.

Remote control: Not possible. Research vehicles. The Flapper Nimble+ is the purchasable, programmable descendant.

Wikipedia ↗MAVLab ↗

Overview

Started as a 2005 student project, the DelFly line produced the camera-carrying DelFly II (2007), the 3-gram DelFly Micro (2008, Guinness record as the smallest camera-carrying aircraft), the stereo-vision DelFly Explorer (2013) for autonomous obstacle avoidance, and the tailless DelFly Nimble (2018), which steers by changing its wing motion like an insect. The Nimble was used to study fruit-fly escape manoeuvres and spun off Flapper Drones in 2019.

Specifications

Category	Flapping-wing fliers · Flapping-wing robots
Released	2007
Availability	Not for sale (research)
Programmability	No programmability
Best for	Professionals & labs
Vision sensors	Camera, Depth camera
Actuators	Unknown
Audio	No audio
Compute type	Arduino / ESP32 / microcontroller, Laptop / PC as the brain
Remote control	Not programmable
Size	DelFly II: 28 cm, 16 g, Micro: 10 cm, 3.07 g, Explorer: 28 cm, 20 g
Locomotion	Clap-and-fling flapping wings, tail-stabilized (II/Micro/Explorer) or tailless with active wing steering (Nimble)
Compute	DelFly II: mostly off-board, Explorer: on-board stereo-vision processing
Camera	Video camera (II/Micro), stereo camera (Explorer)
Sensors	Varies by version (gyros on Nimble)
Runtime	DelFly II ~15 min, Micro 2–3 min
Speed	DelFly II up to 7 m/s, Nimble up to 7 m/s
SDK	None public