As Nimble and Agile as Real Flies

DelFly Nimble by the TU Delft can fly through the air just as artistically as real flies thanks to its flapping wings - and escape the fly swatter.

The "DelFly Nimble" is much larger than a fly with a wingspan of 33 cm and a weight of 29 g, but the four-winged prototype can help to build more agile drones and better understand the flight of flies. It can stand still in the air and suddenly flee from danger at speeds of up to 25 km/h. The heart is the control system.

The heart is the controller: a controller processes the data from several sensors. It calculates how the four wings have to beat up to 17 times per second and sometimes in opposite directions in order to keep the "DelFly Nimble" stable and perform complicated flight maneuvers. The wings are beat using two electric motors. An integrated battery is sufficient for a flight duration of 5 minutes, in which the robot can cover about 1 km.

"I was surprised at how the flight of the robot and that of a real insect resemble each other," says Prof. Florian Muijres from the Experimental Zoology Group at Wageningen University & Research, with which TU Delft works together.  They were even able to avoid attacks from the fly swatter.

TU Delft's MAVLab has been developing robots inspired by insect flight for ten years. "DelFly Nimble" is the first robot that can be manufactured using conventional processes and commercially available components and is suitable for use in the real world," says Prof. Guido de Croon, scientific director of the MAVLab at Delft University of Technology.