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

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

  1. Robust H∞\mathcal{H}_\infty Controller Design For INDI-Controlled Quadrotor Using Online Parameter Identification

    May 6, 2026Tom Aantjes, Till M. Blaha, Spilios Theodoulis +1Robust ControlQuadrotor Control

    Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University Of Technology, 2629HS, Delft, Zuid Holland, The Netherlands

  2. Sensorless State Estimation and Control for Agile Cable-Suspended Payload Transport by Quadrotors

    May 5, 2026Ana Maria Nascimento, Augusto Sales, Antonio Marcus Lima +1Aerial RoboticsNonlinear MPC

  3. Robust Adaptive Predictive Control for Hook-Based Aerial Transportation Between Moving Platforms

    May 4, 2026Péter Antal, Andrea Carron, Melanie Zeilinger +2Robust ControlModel Predictive Control

    Systems and Control Lab, HUN-REN Institute for Computer Science and Control, Budapest, Hungary · Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland · Control Systems Group of the Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

  4. Autonomous UAV Pipeline Near-proximity Inspection via Disturbance-Aware Predictive Visual Servoing

    Apr 21, 2026Wen Li, Hui Wang, Jinya Su +3UAV NavigationIndustrial Inspection

    School of Automation, Key Laboratory of Measurement and Control of CSE, Ministry of Education, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China · Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering, Loughborough University, LE11 3TU, United Kingdom · Research Centre for Low Altitude Economy and the Department of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

  5. Task-Adaptive Admittance Control for Human-Quadrotor Cooperative Load Transportation with Dynamic Cable-Length Regulation

    Apr 20, 2026Shuai Li, Ton T. H. Duong, Damiano ZanottoAerial RoboticsAdmittance Control

    Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA

  6. Neural Network-Based Adaptive Event-Triggered Control for Dual-Arm Unmanned Aerial Manipulator Systems

    Apr 18, 2026Yang Wang, Hai Yu, Wei He +3Robot Trajectory TrackingAerial Robotics

    Institute of Robotics and Automatic Information System, College of Artificial Intelligence, and Tianjin Key Laboratory of Intelligent Robotics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300350, China. · Institute of Intelligence Technology and Robotic Systems, Shenzhen Research Institute of Nankai University, Shenzhen 518083, China.

  7. E2E-Fly: An Integrated Training-to-Deployment System for End-to-End Quadrotor Autonomy

    Apr 14, 2026Fangyu Sun, Fanxing Li, Linzuo Zhang +5Quadrotor ControlSim-to-Real Transfer

    School of Automation and Perception, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China

  8. Simple but Stable, Fast and Safe: Achieve End-to-end Control by High-Fidelity Differentiable Simulation

    Apr 12, 2026Fanxing Li, Shengyang Wang, Yuxiang Huang +5Quadrotor ControlVision-Based Robot Control

    Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Kunshan Duke University

  9. Precise Aggressive Aerial Maneuvers with Sensorimotor Policies

    Apr 7, 2026Tianyue Wu, Guangtong Xu, Zihan Wang +6UAV NavigationQuadrotor Control

    Institute of Cyber-Systems and Control, College of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. · Huzhou Institute of Zhejiang University, Huzhou, China. · Differential Robotics Technology Co., Ltd., Hangzhou, China.

  10. MARS-Dragonfly: Agile and Robust Flight Control of Modular Aerial Robot Systems

    Apr 7, 2026Rui Huang, Zhiqian Cai, Siyu Tang +6Aerial RoboticsModular Robotics

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117583, Singapore · Engineering Design and Innovation Centre, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117583, Singapore

  11. QuadAgent: A Responsive Agent System for Vision-Language Guided Quadrotor Agile Flight

    Apr 3, 2026Ao Zhuang, Feng Yu, Tianbao Zhang +2Aerial VLNQuadrotor Control

  12. MetaTune: Adjoint-based Meta-tuning via Robotic Differentiable Dynamics

    Mar 28, 2026Xiexin Peng, Bingheng Wang, Tao Zhang +2Robust ControlFeedback Control

    School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117583, Singapore · Wuhan Zhenyou Technology Co., Ltd., Wuhan 430205, China

  13. Meta-Adaptive Beam Search Planning for Transformer-Based Reinforcement Learning Control of UAVs with Overhead Manipulators under Flight Disturbances

    Mar 27, 2026Hazim Alzorgan, Sayed Pedram Haeri Boroujeni, Abolfazl RaziAerial ManipulationRobot Trajectory Tracking

    School of Computing, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29632, USA

  14. VisFly-Lab: Unified Differentiable Framework for First-Order Reinforcement Learning of Quadrotor Control

    Mar 22, 2026Fanxing Li, Fangyu Sun, Tianbao Zhang +5Reinforcement LearningQuadrotor Control

  15. GustPilot: A Hierarchical DRL-INDI Framework for Wind-Resilient Quadrotor Navigation

    Mar 20, 2026Amir Atef Habel, Roohan Ahmed Khan, Fawad Mehboob +2UAV NavigationQuadrotor Control

    Intelligent Space Robotics Laboratory, Center for Digital Engineering, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Moscow, Russia.

  16. Dual Quaternion Based Contact Modeling for Fast and Smooth Collision Recovery of Quadrotors

    Mar 16, 2026Valentin Gaucher, Wenlong ZhangRobot Failure RecoveryQuadrotor Control

    School of Manufacturing Systems and Networks, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University, Mesa, AZ, 85212, USA.

  17. ASTER: Attitude-aware Suspended-payload Quadrotor Traversal via Efficient Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 11, 2026Dongcheng Cao, Jin Zhou, Shuo LiQuadrotor ControlRobotic RL

    College of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.

  18. MAVEN: A Meta-Reinforcement Learning Framework for Varying-Dynamics Expertise in Agile Quadrotor Maneuvers

    Mar 11, 2026Jin Zhou, Dongcheng Cao, Xian Wang +1Robot Policy AdaptationQuadrotor Control

    Authors are with the College of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China

  19. NanoBench: A Multi-Task Benchmark Dataset for Nano-Quadrotor System Identification, Control, and State Estimation

    Mar 10, 2026Syed Izzat Ullah, Jose BacaBenchmark DesignNonlinear System Identification

    Department of Engineering Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi, TX, USA

  20. WESPR: Wind-adaptive Energy-Efficient Safe Perception & Planning for Robust Flight with Quadrotors

    Mar 10, 2026Khuzema Habib, Pranav Deshakulkarni Manjunath, Kasra Torshizi +2Quadrotor ControlMotion Planning

    University of Maryland, College Park.

  21. Adaptive SINDy: Residual Force System Identification Based UAV Disturbance Rejection

    Mar 9, 2026Fawad Mehboob, Amir Atef Habel, Roohan Ahmed Khan +3Disturbance RejectionRobust Control

    Intelligent Space Robotics Laboratory, Center for Digital Engineering, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Moscow, Russia.

  22. SEP-NMPC: Safety Enhanced Passivity-Based Nonlinear Model Predictive Control for a UAV Slung Payload System

    Mar 9, 2026Seyedreza Rezaei, Junjie Kang, Amaldev Haridevan +1Nonlinear MPCQuadrotor Control

    Department of Earth and Space Science and Engineering, York University, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada

  23. Drag-Aware Aerodynamic Manipulability for Torque-Limited Redundant Multirotors: Aerodynamic Promptness based on the Symmetric Acceleration Capacity

    Mar 9, 2026Antonio FranchiAerial RoboticsQuadrotor 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

  24. Physics-infused Learning for Aerial Manipulator in Winds and Near-Wall Environments

    Mar 8, 2026Yiming Zhang, Junyi GengAerial ManipulationRobust Control

    The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802

  25. Approximate Imitation Learning for Event-based Quadrotor Flight in Cluttered Environments

    Mar 8, 2026Nico Messikommer, Jiaxu Xing, Leonard Bauersfeld +3Robot Imitation LearningRobotic Control

    Robotics and Perception Group, University of Zurich, Switzerland.

  26. Energy-Efficient Collaborative Transport of Tether-Suspended Payloads via Rotating Equilibrium

    Mar 7, 2026Eric Foss, Andrew Tai, Carlo Bosio +1Aerial RoboticsMulti-Robot Coordination

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

  27. How to Model Your Crazyflie Brushless

    Mar 6, 2026Alexander Gräfe, Christoph Scherer, Wolfgang Hönig +1Quadrotor ControlRobotics Simulation

    Institute for Data Science in Mechanical Engineering, RWTH Aachen University, Germany · Intelligent Multi-Robot Coordination Lab, TU Berlin, Germany

  28. 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

  29. 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.

  30. Autonomous Aerial Non-Destructive Testing: Ultrasound Inspection with a Commercial Quadrotor in an Unstructured Environment

    Mar 4, 2026Ruben Veenstra, Barbara Bazzana, Sander Smits +1Robotic InspectionIndustrial Inspection

    Robotics and Mechatronics lab, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics & Computer Science, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands. · Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy.