Quadrotor Control

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Overview

Quadrotor control concerns keeping these agile aerial robots stable while tracking trajectories, avoiding obstacles, and handling disturbances, changing payloads, or physical interaction. Common approaches include geometric and PID controllers, incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion, and model predictive control, often paired with control barrier functions for safety; learning methods such as reinforcement learning and learned dynamics are increasingly used for agile flight and adaptation. Applications range from racing and cluttered navigation to inspection, landing, formation flight, and transporting or manipulating payloads. A central challenge is achieving reliable sim-to-real transfer and safe performance under uncertain dynamics while meeting the tight computation and sensing limits of small onboard platforms.

Latest papers

CardsList

126 papers19 papers in the last four weeks, down 14% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. VisGeo-PipeTrack: A Visual Geometric Servo Control Framework with MPC-RCAPID Control for UAV-Based Dynamic Pipes Tracking

    Oct 26, 2026Zhenyang Gao, Jianlin Chen, Yang Yu +3Quadrotor ControlVision-Based Robot Control

    School of Civil Aviation, Northwestern Polytechnical University, 127 West Youyi Road, Xi’an Shaanxi, 710072, P. R. China. · School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, P. R. China.

  2. How Tuning, Reference Preview, Actuator Modeling, and Fallback Policies Change Quadrotor Controller Comparisons: A Reproducible Simulation Study

    Oct 26, 2026Xuan-Quy Dao, Le-Minh Nguyen, Ngoc-Bich LeQuadrotor ControlModel Predictive Control

    Eastern International University Binh Duong, Vietnam · Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

  3. ISB-NMPC: Interception-Oriented Spherical-Bearing Nonlinear Model Predictive Control for Quadrotors

    Oct 26, 2026Li Hong, Linkai Liu, Xiangyu Ren +6Quadrotor ControlNonlinear MPC

    Li Hong, Chen Min, and Yujun Zhang are with Shen Yuan Honors College, Beihang University, Beijing, China · Linkai Liu, Xiangyu Ren, Shuli Lv, Dingchen Zeng, and Quan Quan are with the School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, China. · Chunjiang Wu is with the Hangzhou International Innovation Institute, Beihang University, Hangzhou, China.

  4. Dual Gradient Consensus for Adaptive Learning to Transient Out-of-Distribution Disturbances in Quadrotor Control

    Oct 25, 2026Mingtian Tan, Vasileios TzoumasQuadrotor ControlDisturbance Rejection

  5. Trajectory Generation and Control for Quadrotors

    Oct 25, 2026Sandesh ThapaQuadrotor ControlTrajectory Generation

    School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Control, Robotics & Automation Lab (CoRAL), Fall 2017 Oklahoma State University Stillwater, Oklahoma

  6. Nonlinear Control of Aerial Manipulator

    Oct 25, 2026Sandesh ThapaAerial RoboticsAerial Manipulation

    School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Control, Robotics & Automation Lab (CoRAL), Spring 2017 Oklahoma State University Stillwater, Oklahoma

  7. DiffDreamer: Coupling World Models with Differentiable Simulation for Agile Quadrotor Control

    Oct 22, 2026Fanxing Li, Yuxiang Huang, Shengyang Wang +7Quadrotor ControlReinforcement Learning

  8. Tilt-Rotor Quadcopter with Learned Residual Control and Mode-Dependent State Estimation

    Oct 22, 2026Ninad Joshi, Prabhat KumarQuadrotor ControlFeedback Control

    Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India

  9. Real-Time Disturbance-Aware Koopman Model Predictive Control for Quadrotors in Spatially Varying Winds

    Oct 20, 2026Stella Kombo, Masih Haseli, Alejandro A. Stefan-Zavala +3Adaptive MPCQuadrotor Control

    Division of Engineering and Applied Science, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.

  10. TransNav: Transformer-Based End-to-End Navigation Method for Static and Dynamic Quadrotor Obstacle Avoidance

    Oct 16, 2026Jianghan Zhu, Zhuo Li, Yanjun Zhang +1Robot NavigationAerial Robotics

    The authors are with the State Key Laboratory of Autonomous Intelligent Unmanned Systems, School of Automation, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China

  11. ClearNav: Perception-Aligned Quadrotor Flight Using Differential-Physics

    Oct 12, 2026Aditya Azad, Arthur Huang, Guanrui LiUAV NavigationRobot Navigation

    Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA, USA · Northeastern University, MA, USA

  12. Constrained Differentiable Policy Learning for Safe Quadrotor Navigation

    Oct 12, 2026Yan Rui Tan, Praveen Krishnapur, Zeyu Feng +3Robot Policy LearningConstrained RL

    National University of Singapore, Singapore. · Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore.

  13. REFLEX: A Learned On-Board Reflex for Robust Autonomous Collision Recovery of Soft Quadrotors

    Oct 11, 2026Jakob Hermeler, Luca Girardi, Gabriel Maquignaz +2Robot Failure RecoveryQuadrotor Control

    Mobile Robotics Lab, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. · Environmental Robotics Lab, Faculty of Agricultural, Nutritional and Engineering Sciences, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany.

  14. An Open MuJoCo Simulation Framework for a Quadrotor Carrying a Tendon-Driven Soft Continuum Arm

    Oct 11, 2026Haitham El-HussienyAerial ManipulationRobotics Simulation

    Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST), Alexandria, Egypt

  15. Safety-Critical Quadrotor Navigation Using Fourth-Order Control Barrier Functions with Full Nonlinear Quadrotor Dynamics

    Oct 10, 2026Yanze Liu, Yaşar İdikut, Dhruv Madhusudan Agrawal +2Safety-Critical ControlQuadrotor Control

    Department of Robotics Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA 01609 USA · Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

  16. WAND: Learning Robust Navigation under Complex Wind Disturbances and Dense Obstacles for Quadrotors

    Oct 8, 2026Zhonghan Tang, Chenhui Li, Shuai Liang +5Disturbance RejectionRobot Navigation

    Department of Electronic Engineering and Information Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230027, China · Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Shanghai 200232, China · Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China +1

  17. Emergent Underactuation in Fully Actuated Multirotors by Minimizing a Homogeneous Allocation Cost

    Oct 3, 2026Antonio Franchi, Barbara BazzanaQuadrotor ControlOptimal Control

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

  18. Barrier-Shaped Recurrent Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Landing on a Heaving Ship Deck

    Oct 2, 2026Ritwik Shankar, Chiranjeev Prachand, Abhishek +1UAV Landing on Moving PlatformsAerial Robotics

    Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India · Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India

  19. DR-IPC: Disturbance-Resilient Integrated Planning and Control for LiDAR-Based Quadrotor Navigation

    Oct 2, 2026Peng Liu, Jingyan Wang, Qipeng Ye +5Disturbance RejectionUAV Navigation

    School of Automation, Key Laboratory of Measurement and Control of CSE, Ministry of Education, Institute of Intelligent Unmanned Systems, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China. · School of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Xiamen University of Technology, Xiamen 361024, China. · Department of Computer Science, University College London, London, WC1E 6BT, UK.

  20. L1-MPPI: L1 Adaptive Model Predictive Path Integral for Agile UAV Control

    Sep 29, 2026Lukáš Kotek, Ondřej Procházka, Vojtěch Vonásek +2Robot Trajectory TrackingQuadrotor Control

    Multi-robot Systems Group, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic

  21. Battery-Aware Reinforcement Learning for Aggressive Quadrotor Flight

    Sep 29, 2026Alejandro Sanchez Roncero, Olov Andersson, Petter OgrenRL ControlAutonomous Drone Racing

    Department of Robotics, Perception and Learning, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden

  22. DQ-MPCC: Dual-Quaternion MPCC for Quadrotor Racing

    Sep 29, 2026Bryan S. Guevara, Luis F. Recalde, Guanrui Li +1Autonomous Drone RacingModel Predictive Control

    Laboratory of Systems and Robotics Engineering (LASER), Center of Informatics (CI), Federal University of Para´ıba (UFPB), Jo˜ao Pessoa, PB 58051-900, Brazil · Department of Robotics Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Worcester, MA 01609, USA

  23. Onboard Wind-Preview Model Predictive Control Using Pitot-Static Sensing for Multirotor UAVs

    Sep 25, 2026Bas Meere, Eline Wisse, Laurens Vousten +4Quadrotor ControlRobust Control

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5612 AE Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in the Control Systems Technology group · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5612 AE Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in the Robotics group

  24. OA-MPPI: Occlusion-Aware Model Predictive Path Integral Control for UAV Flight

    Sep 23, 2026Vittorio Palladino, Teaya Yang, Ruiqi Zhang +1UAV NavigationQuadrotor Control

    High Performance Robotics Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States

  25. A Deployment Study of Identity-Gated Drone Gesture Control

    Sep 22, 2026Diyari Mohammed Salih, Ilyes Chaabeni, Naima Ait OufroukhGesture RecognitionQuadrotor Control

    1M2 Smart Aerospace and Autonomous Systems, Université Paris-Saclay, Évry, France. · 2IBISC Laboratory, Université Paris-Saclay, Évry, France.

  26. Decentralized Safe Path Following for Multiple Quadrotors on Intersecting Paths with Theoretical Guarantees

    Sep 20, 2026Hamza Tariq, Adeel AkhtarQuadrotor ControlMulti-Robot Coordination

    Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ 07102, USA

  27. RAYA: Learning Where and When to Intervene for Robot Recovery

    Sep 18, 2026Ishaan Mahajan, Charles Chen, Frederike Dümbgen +1Robot Failure RecoveryReal-Time Robot Control

    College of Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. · Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA.

  28. Tilt as a Certified Resource: Preserving Motor Wrench-Rate Authority on Articulated Multirotors

    Sep 18, 2026Giuseppe Silano, Martin SaskaQuadrotor ControlRobot Morphology-Control Co-Design

    Department of Power Generation Technologies and Materials, Ricerca sul Sistema Energetico (RSE) S.p.A., 20134 Milan, Italy · Department of Cybernetics, Czech Technical University in Prague, 12135 Prague, Czech Republic

  29. Design of Adaptive PID Controller Based On Asynchronous Advantage Actor Critic Learning Method for QuadCopter Control

    Sep 17, 2026Ali Jokar, Aria AlastyQuadrotor ControlAdaptive Control

    Sharif AgRoLab School of Mechanical Engineering Sharif University of Technology Tehran, Iran

  30. Integrated Guidance and Control of a Mother-Child UAV-UGV System for Cooperative Missions

    Sep 17, 2026Aashish Sahu, R. Prasanth KumarAerial RoboticsMulti-Robot Coordination

    Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Telangana, India | Department of Artificial Intelligence, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Telangana, India