Aerial Robotics

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Overview

Aerial robotics develops flying machines—from multirotors and fixed-wing aircraft to flapping-wing and hybrid robots—and the methods that let them sense, move, and interact with the world. Work combines onboard perception and state estimation with model-based planning and control, including model predictive control, visual servoing, and robust control; reinforcement learning and vision-language-action models are increasingly used for navigation, tracking, and manipulation. Researchers also study cooperative swarms, aerial transport, landing, and contact tasks, evaluating systems in simulation and benchmarks as well as on real robots with limited power, computing, and sensing. A central challenge is making learning-based autonomy generalize from simulation to changing real conditions while preserving safety, reliability, and real-time performance.

Latest papers

CardsList

343 papers38 papers in the last four weeks, down 24% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

  1. Swooper: Learning High-Speed Aerial Grasping With a Simple Gripper

    Mar 6, 2026Ziken Huang, Xinze Niu, Bowen Chai +2Aerial RoboticsAerial Manipulation

    School of Automation and Intelligent Sensing, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

  2. ROScopter: A Multirotor Autopilot based on ROSflight 2.0

    Mar 5, 2026Jacob Moore, Ian Reid, Phil Tokumaru +2Aerial RoboticsQuadrotor Control

    Brigham Young University · AeroVironment Inc.

  3. Distributed State Estimation for Vision-Based Cooperative Slung Load Transportation in GPS-Denied Environments

    Mar 4, 2026Jack R. Pence, Jackson Fezell, Jack W. Langelaan +1Aerial RoboticsRelative Pose Estimation

    The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, 16802

  4. Robust Tightly-Coupled Filter-Based Monocular Visual-Inertial State Estimation and Graph-Based Evaluation for Autonomous Drone Racing

    Mar 3, 2026Maulana Bisyir Azhari, Donghun Han, Sung Jun Park +1Autonomous Drone RacingError-State Kalman Filtering

    Unmanned Systems Research Group (USRG), School of Electrical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon 34141, South Korea.

  5. Wukong-Omni: Design, Modeling and Control of a Multi-mode Robot for Air, Land, and Underwater Exploration with All-in-One Propulsion Unit

    Mar 3, 2026Yufan Liu, Rixi Yu, Junjie Li +7Robot LocomotionRobotic Control

    School of Automation, Guandong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China · School of Electromechanical Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China · Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China

  6. Tiny-DroNeRF: Tiny Neural Radiance Fields aboard Federated Learning-enabled Nano-drones

    Mar 2, 2026Ilenia Carboni, Elia Cereda, Lorenzo Lamberti +3Neural Radiance Fields3D Reconstruction

    Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence, USI-SUPSI, Switzerland. · Department of Electrical, Electronic and Information Engineering, University of Bologna, Italy. · Integrated Systems Laboratory, ETH Zürich, Switzerland.

  7. MiniUGV2_2: A Compact UAV-Deployable Tracked Ground Vehicle with Manipulation Capabilities

    Mar 1, 2026Durgakant Pushp, Swapnil Kalhapure, Shaekh Mohammad Shithil +1RoboticsMobile Robotics

    Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47408, USA. · S. Kalhapure is an Independent Researcher at the time of work.

  8. AI-IO: An Aerodynamics-Inspired Real-Time Inertial Odometry for Quadrotors

    Feb 28, 2026Jiahao Cui, Feng Yu, Linzuo Zhang +2Inertial OdometryAerial Robotics

    All authors are with the Shanghai Key Laboratory of Navigation and Location-Based Services, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

  9. Curriculum Reinforcement Learning for Quadrotor Racing with Random Obstacles

    Feb 27, 2026Fangyu Sun, Fanxing Li, Yu Hu +4Autonomous Drone RacingAutonomous Racing

    School of Automation and Perception, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China · Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

  10. Learning Robust Control Policies for Inverted Pose on Miniature Blimp Robots

    Feb 27, 2026Yuanlin Yang, Lin Hong, Fumin ZhangRobotic ControlAerial Robotics

    Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China

  11. Acceleration-Based Control of Fixed-Wing UAVs for Guidance Applications

    Feb 27, 2026Jixiang Wang, Siyuan Yang, Ziyi Wu +5Aerial RoboticsUAV Navigation

    School of Aerospace Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China. · Autonomous Robotics Research Centre, Technology Innovation Institute, P.O.Box: 9639, Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

  12. SAGE-LLM: Towards Safe and Generalizable LLM Controller with Fuzzy-CBF Verification and Graph-Structured Knowledge Retrieval for UAV Decision

    Feb 27, 2026Wenzhe Zhao, Yang Zhao, Ganchao Liu +4Language Model-Based ControlLLM Agent Safety

    School of Artificial Intelligence, OPtics and ElectroNics (iOPEN), Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China · Institute of Artificial Intelligence (TeleAI), China Telecom, China

  13. Tilt-X: Enabling Compliant Aerial Manipulation through a Tiltable-Extensible Continuum Manipulator

    Feb 27, 2026Anuraj Uthayasooriyan, Krishna Manaswi Digumarti, Jack Breward +3Aerial ManipulationAerial Robotics

    QUT Centre for Robotics, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD Australia 4000 · School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD Australia 4000 · REF,Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD Australia 4000

  14. Robust Helicopter Ship Deck Landing With Guaranteed Timing Using Shrinking-Horizon Model Predictive Control

    Feb 26, 2026Philipp Schitz, Paolo Mercorelli, Johann C. DauerAerial RoboticsModel Predictive Control

    Institute of Flight Systems, German Aerospace Center (DLR), 38108 Braunschweig, Germany · Institute for Production Technology and Systems, Leuphana University of Lueneburg, 21335 Lueneburg, Germany

  15. Hierarchical Trajectory Planning of Floating-Base Multi-Link Robot for Maneuvering in Confined Environments

    Feb 25, 2026Yicheng Chen, Jinjie Li, Haokun Liu +3Robot Motion PlanningMotion Planning

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan

  16. Event-Aided Sharp Radiance Field Reconstruction for Fast-Flying Drones

    Feb 24, 2026Rong Zou, Marco Cannici, Davide ScaramuzzaNeural Radiance FieldsAerial Robotics

    Robotics and Perception Group, University of Zurich, Switzerland

  17. EKF-Based Depth Camera and Deep Learning Fusion for UAV-Person Distance Estimation and Following in SAR Operations

    Feb 24, 2026Luka Šiktar, Branimir Ćaran, Bojan Šekoranja +1Search-and-Rescue RoboticsAerial Robotics

    Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

  18. Cross domain Persistent Monitoring for Hybrid Aerial Underwater Vehicles

    Feb 23, 2026Ricardo B. Grando, Victor A. Kich, Alisson H. Kolling +3RoboticsUnderwater Robotics

  19. Bumper Drone: Elastic Morphology Design for Aerial Physical Interaction

    Feb 21, 2026Pongporn Supa, Alex Dunnett, Feng Xiao +3Aerial RoboticsRobot Morphology-Control Co-Design

    School of Engineering Mathematics and Technology, University of Bristol. · School of Civil, Aerospace and Design Engineering, University of Bristol. · Department of Aeronautics, Imperial College London, London, UK. +1

  20. RotorSuite: A MATLAB/Simulink Toolbox for Tilt Multi-Rotor UAV Modeling

    Feb 21, 2026Nicola Cigarini, Giulia Michieletto, Angelo CenedeseAerial RoboticsRobotics Simulation

    Department of Information Engineering University of Padova, Vicenza, Italy · Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry, University of Padova, Legnaro, Italy · Department of Management and Engineering, University of Padova, Padova, Italy +1

  21. Downwash-aware Configuration Optimization for Modular Aerial Systems

    Feb 20, 2026Mengguang Li, Heinz KoepplAerial RoboticsModular Robotics

    Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Technische Universität Darmstadt, 64287 Darmstadt, Germany.

  22. Nonlinear Predictive Control of the Continuum and Hybrid Dynamics of a Suspended Deformable Cable for Aerial Pick and Place

    Feb 19, 2026Antonio Rapuano, Yaolei Shen, Federico Califano +2Aerial ManipulationAerial Robotics

    Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy. · Robotics and Mechatronics Department, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science (EEMCS) Faculty, University of Twente, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands.

  23. Decentralized and Fully Onboard: Range-Aided Cooperative Localization and Navigation on Micro Aerial Vehicles

    Feb 18, 2026Abhishek Goudar, Angela P. SchoelligCooperative LocalizationRobot Navigation

    The authors are with the Learning Systems and Robotics Lab at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, and the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, Canada. They are also affiliated with the University of Toronto Robotics Institute, the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI), and the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

  24. SCAR: Satellite Imagery-Based Calibration for Aerial Recordings

    Feb 18, 2026Henry Hölzemann, Michael SchleissCamera CalibrationAerial Robotics

    Department of Sensor Data and Information Fusion, Fraunhofer FKIE, 53343 Wachtberg, Germany · Chair of Astronautics, University of the Bundeswehr Munich, 85579 Neubiberg, Germany

  25. SpecFuse: A Spectral-Temporal Fusion Predictive Control Framework for UAV Landing on Oscillating Marine Platforms

    Feb 17, 2026Haichao Liu, Yufeng Hu, Shuang Wang +3UAV Landing on Moving PlatformsAerial Robotics

    The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Guangzhou 511453, China · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong SAR, China

  26. Tilt-Ropter: A Fully Actuated Hybrid Aerial-Terrestrial Vehicle with Tilt Rotors and Passive Wheels

    Feb 2, 2026Ruoyu Wang, Xuchen Liu, Zongzhou Wu +3Robotic ControlRobot Trajectory Tracking

    Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong · Faculty of Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong · Peng Cheng Laboratory, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

  27. TriphiBot: A Triphibious Robot Combining FOC-based Propulsion with Eccentric Design

    Feb 1, 2026Xiangyu Li, Tiancheng Lai, Mingwei Lai +6Aerial RoboticsNonlinear MPC

    State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China · Huzhou Institute of Zhejiang University, Huzhou 313000, China · Hainan Red Tower Cigarette Co., Ltd., Hainan 571100, China

  28. AION: Aerial Indoor Object-Goal Navigation Using Dual-Policy Reinforcement Learning

    Jan 22, 2026Zichen Yan, Yuchen Hou, Shenao Wang +3RL for RoboticsAerial Robotics

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore.

  29. Reach-Avoid Differential game with Reachability Analysis for UAVs: A decomposition approach

    Dec 28, 2025Minh Bui, Simon Monckton, Mo ChenGame TheoryReachability Analysis

    Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada · Defense Research & Development Canada (DRDC), Medicine Hat, Alberta T1A 8K6, Canada

  30. Flocking phase transition and threat responses in bio-inspired autonomous drone swarms

    Dec 24, 2025Matthieu Verdoucq, Dari Trendafilov, Clément Sire +3Aerial RoboticsMulti-Robot Systems

    Ecole Nationale de l’Aviation Civile, Université de Toulouse, France · Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale, Centre de Biologie Intégrative (CBI), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) & Université de Toulouse – Paul Sabatier, France · Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, CNRS & Université de Toulouse – Paul Sabatier, France