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

Wind disturbances remain a key barrier to reliable autonomous navigation for lightweight quadrotors, where the rapidly varying airflow can destabilize both planning and tracking. This paper introduces GustPilot, a hierarchical wind-resilient navigation stack in which a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) policy generates inertial-frame velocity reference for gate traversal. At the same time, a geometric Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (INDI) controller provides low-level tracking with fast residual disturbance rejection. The INDI layer achieves this by providing incremental feedback on both specific linear acceleration and angular acceleration rate, using onboard sensor measurements to reject wind disturbances rapidly. Robustness is obtained through a two-level strategy, wind-aware planning learned via fan-jet domain randomization during training, and rapid execution-time disturbance rejection by the INDI tracking controller. We evaluate GustPilot in real flights on a 50g quad-copter platform against a DRL-PID baseline across four scenarios ranging from no-wind to fully dynamic conditions with a moving gate and a moving disturbance source. Despite being trained only in a minimal single-gate and single-fan setup, the policy generalizes to significantly more complex environments (up to six gates and four fans) without retraining. Across 80 experiments, DRL-INDI achieves a 94.7% versus 55.0% for DRL-PID as average Overall Success Rate (OSR), reduces tracking RMSE up to 50%, and sustains speeds up to 1.34 m/s under wind disturbances up to 3.5 m/s. These results demonstrate that combining DRL-based velocity planning with structured INDI disturbance rejection provides a practical and generalizable approach to wind-resilient autonomous flight navigation.

ImpedanceDiffusion: Diffusion-Based Global Path Planning for UAV Swarm Navigation with Generative Impedance Control

Safe swarm navigation in cluttered indoor environment requires long-horizon planning, reactive obstacle avoidance, and adaptive compliance. We propose ImpedanceDiffusion, a hierarchical framework that leverages image-conditioned diffusion-based global path planning with Artificial Potential Field (APF) tracking and semantic-aware variable impedance control for aerial drone swarms. The diffusion model generates geometric global trajectories directly from RGB images without explicit map construction. These trajectories are tracked by an APF-based reactive layer, while a VLM-RAG module performs semantic obstacle classification with 90% retrieval accuracy to adapt impedance parameters for mixed obstacle environments during execution. Two diffusion planners are evaluated: (i) a top-view long-horizon planner using single-pass inference and (ii) a first-person-view (FPV) short-horizon planner deployed via a two-stage inference pipeline. Both planners achieve a 100% trajectory generation rate across twenty static and dynamic experimental configurations and are validated via zero-shot sim-to-real deployment on Crazyflie 2.1 drones through the hierarchical APF-impedance control stack. The top-view planner produces smoother trajectories that yield conservative tracking speeds of 1.0-1.2 m/s near hard obstacles and 0.6-1.0 m/s near soft obstacles. In contrast, the FPV planner generates trajectories with greater local clearance and typically higher speeds, reaching 1.4-2.0 m/s near hard obstacles and up to 1.6 m/s near soft obstacles. Across 20 experimental configurations (100 total runs), the framework achieved a 92% success rate while maintaining stable impedance-based formation control with bounded oscillations and no in-flight collisions, demonstrating reliable and adaptive swarm navigation in cluttered indoor environments.

Adaptive SINDy: Residual Force System Identification Based UAV Disturbance Rejection

The stability and control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in a turbulent environment is a matter of great concern. Devising a robust control algorithm to reject disturbances is challenging due to the highly nonlinear nature of wind dynamics, and modeling the dynamics using analytical techniques is not straightforward. While traditional techniques using disturbance observers and classical adaptive control have shown some progress, they are mostly limited to relatively non-complex environments. On the other hand, learning based approaches are increasingly being used for modeling of residual forces and disturbance rejection; however, their generalization and interpretability is a factor of concern. To this end, we propose a novel integration of data-driven system identification using Sparse Identification of Non-Linear Dynamics (SINDy) with a Recursive Least Square (RLS) adaptive control to adapt and reject wind disturbances in a turbulent environment. We tested and validated our approach on Gazebo harmonic environment and on real flights with wind speeds of up to 2 m/s from four directions, creating a highly dynamic and turbulent environment. Adaptive SINDy outperformed the baseline PID and INDI controllers on several trajectory tracking error metrics without crashing. A root mean square error (RMSE) of up to 12.2 cm and 17.6 cm, and a mean absolute error (MAE) of 13.7 cm and 10.5 cm were achieved on circular and lemniscate trajectories, respectively. The validation was performed on a very lightweight Crazyflie drone under a highly dynamic environment for complex trajectory tracking.

Glove2UAV: A Wearable IMU-Based Glove for Intuitive Control of UAV

This paper presents Glove2UAV, a wearable IMU-glove interface for intuitive UAV control through hand and finger gestures, augmented with vibrotactile warnings for exceeding predefined speed thresholds. To promote safer and more predictable interaction in dynamic flight, Glove2UAV is designed as a lightweight and easily deployable wearable interface intended for real-time operation. Glove2UAV streams inertial measurements in real time and estimates palm and finger orientations using a compact processing pipeline that combines median-based outlier suppression with Madgwick-based orientation estimation. The resulting motion estimations are mapped to a small set of control primitives for directional flight (forward/backward and lateral motion) and, when supported by the platform, to object-interaction commands. Vibrotactile feedback is triggered when flight speed exceeds predefined threshold values, providing an additional alert channel during operation. We validate real-time feasibility by synchronizing glove signals with UAV telemetry in both simulation and real-world flights. The results show fast gesture-based command execution, stable coupling between gesture dynamics and platform motion, correct operation of the core command set in our trials, and timely delivery of vibratile warning cues.

HumanDiffusion: A Vision-Based Diffusion Trajectory Planner with Human-Conditioned Goals for Search and Rescue UAV

Reliable human--robot collaboration in emergency scenarios requires autonomous systems that can detect humans, infer navigation goals, and operate safely in dynamic environments. This paper presents HumanDiffusion, a lightweight image-conditioned diffusion planner that generates human-aware navigation trajectories directly from RGB imagery. The system combines YOLO-11--based human detection with diffusion-driven trajectory generation, enabling a quadrotor to approach a target person and deliver medical assistance without relying on prior maps or computationally intensive planning pipelines. Trajectories are predicted in pixel space, ensuring smooth motion and a consistent safety margin around humans. We evaluate HumanDiffusion in simulation and real-world indoor mock-disaster scenarios. On a 300-sample test set, the model achieves a mean squared error of 0.02 in pixel-space trajectory reconstruction. Real-world experiments demonstrate an overall mission success rate of 80% across accident-response and search-and-locate tasks with partial occlusions. These results indicate that human-conditioned diffusion planning offers a practical and robust solution for human-aware UAV navigation in time-critical assistance settings.

SwarmVLM: VLM-Guided Impedance Control for Autonomous Navigation of Heterogeneous Robots in Dynamic Warehousing

With the growing demand for efficient logistics, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly being paired with automated guided vehicles (AGVs). While UAVs offer the ability to navigate through dense environments and varying altitudes, they are limited by battery life, payload capacity, and flight duration, necessitating coordinated ground support. Focusing on heterogeneous navigation, SwarmVLM addresses these limitations by enabling semantic collaboration between UAVs and ground robots through impedance control. The system leverages the Vision Language Model (VLM) and the Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to adjust impedance control parameters in response to environmental changes. In this framework, the UAV acts as a leader using Artificial Potential Field (APF) planning for real-time navigation, while the ground robot follows via virtual impedance links with adaptive link topology to avoid collisions with short obstacles. The system demonstrated a 92% success rate across 12 real-world trials. Under optimal lighting conditions, the VLM-RAG framework achieved 8% accuracy in object detection and selection of impedance parameters. The mobile robot prioritized short obstacle avoidance, occasionally resulting in a lateral deviation of up to 50 cm from the UAV path, which showcases safe navigation in a cluttered setting.

NMPC-Lander: Nonlinear MPC with Barrier Function for UAV Landing on a Mobile Platform

Quadcopters are versatile aerial robots gaining popularity in numerous critical applications. However, their operational effectiveness is constrained by limited battery life and restricted flight range. To address these challenges, autonomous drone landing on stationary or mobile charging and battery-swapping stations has become an essential capability. In this study, we present NMPC-Lander, a novel control architecture that integrates Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) with Control Barrier Functions (CBF) to achieve precise and safe autonomous landing on both static and dynamic platforms. Our approach employs NMPC for accurate trajectory tracking and landing, while simultaneously incorporating CBF to ensure collision avoidance with static obstacles. Experimental evaluations on the real hardware demonstrate high precision in landing scenarios, with an average final position error of 9.0 cm and 11 cm for stationary and mobile platforms, respectively. Notably, NMPC-Lander outperforms the B-spline combined with the A* planning method by nearly threefold in terms of position tracking, underscoring its superior robustness and practical effectiveness.

AttentionSwarm: Reinforcement Learning with Attention Control Barier Function for Crazyflie Drones in Dynamic Environments

We introduce AttentionSwarm, a novel benchmark designed to evaluate safe and efficient swarm control across three challenging environments: a landing environment with obstacles, a competitive drone game setting, and a dynamic drone racing scenario. Central to our approach is the Attention Model Based Control Barrier Function (CBF) framework, which integrates attention mechanisms with safety-critical control theory to enable real-time collision avoidance and trajectory optimization. This framework dynamically prioritizes critical obstacles and agents in the swarms vicinity using attention weights, while CBFs formally guarantee safety by enforcing collision-free constraints. The safe attention net algorithm was developed and evaluated using a swarm of Crazyflie 2.1 micro quadrotors, which were tested indoors with the Vicon motion capture system to ensure precise localization and control. Experimental results show that our system achieves landing accuracy of 3.02 cm with a mean time of 23 s and collision-free landings in a dynamic landing environment, 100% and collision-free navigation in a drone game environment, and 95% and collision-free navigation for a dynamic multiagent drone racing environment, underscoring its effectiveness and robustness in real-world scenarios. This work offers a promising foundation for applications in dynamic environments where safety and fastness are paramount.

ImpedanceGPT: VLM-driven Impedance Control of Swarm of Mini-drones for Intelligent Navigation in Dynamic Environment

Swarm robotics plays a crucial role in enabling autonomous operations in dynamic and unpredictable environments. However, a major challenge remains ensuring safe and efficient navigation in environments filled with both dynamic alive (e.g., humans) and dynamic inanimate (e.g., non-living objects) obstacles. In this paper, we propose ImpedanceGPT, a novel system that combines a Vision-Language Model (VLM) with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to enable real-time reasoning for adaptive navigation of mini-drone swarms in complex environments. The key innovation of ImpedanceGPT lies in the integration of VLM and RAG, which provides the drones with enhanced semantic understanding of their surroundings. This enables the system to dynamically adjust impedance control parameters in response to obstacle types and environmental conditions. Our approach not only ensures safe and precise navigation but also improves coordination between drones in the swarm. Experimental evaluations demonstrate the effectiveness of the system. The VLM-RAG framework achieved an obstacle detection and retrieval accuracy of 80 % under optimal lighting. In static environments, drones navigated dynamic inanimate obstacles at 1.4 m/s but slowed to 0.7 m/s with increased separation around humans. In dynamic environments, speed adjusted to 1.0 m/s near hard obstacles, while reducing to 0.6 m/s with higher deflection to safely avoid moving humans.

HetSwarm: Cooperative Navigation of Heterogeneous Swarm in Dynamic and Dense Environments through Impedance-based Guidance

With the growing demand for efficient logistics and warehouse management, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are emerging as a valuable complement to automated guided vehicles (AGVs). UAVs enhance efficiency by navigating dense environments and operating at varying altitudes. However, their limited flight time, battery life, and payload capacity necessitate a supporting ground station. To address these challenges, we propose HetSwarm, a heterogeneous multi-robot system that combines a UAV and a mobile ground robot for collaborative navigation in cluttered and dynamic conditions. Our approach employs an artificial potential field (APF)-based path planner for the UAV, allowing it to dynamically adjust its trajectory in real time. The ground robot follows this path while maintaining connectivity through impedance links, ensuring stable coordination. Additionally, the ground robot establishes temporal impedance links with low-height ground obstacles to avoid local collisions, as these obstacles do not interfere with the UAV's flight. Experimental validation of HetSwarm in diverse environmental conditions demonstrated a 90% success rate across 30 test cases. The ground robot exhibited an average deviation of 45 cm near obstacles, confirming effective collision avoidance. Extensive simulations in the Gym PyBullet environment further validated the robustness of our system for real-world applications, demonstrating its potential for dynamic, real-time task execution in cluttered environments.