mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Autonomous Drone Racing: A Survey

arXiv 2301.01755 ↗First posted 4 Jan 2023cs.ROcited by 35

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Abstract (arXiv)

Over the last decade, the use of autonomous drone systems for surveying, search and rescue, or last-mile delivery has increased exponentially. With the rise of these applications comes the need for highly robust, safety-critical algorithms which can operate drones in complex and uncertain environments. Additionally, flying fast enables drones to cover more ground which in turn increases productivity and further strengthens their use case. One proxy for developing algorithms used in high-speed navigation is the task of autonomous drone racing, where researchers program drones to fly through a sequence of gates and avoid obstacles as quickly as possible using onboard sensors and limited computational power. Speeds and accelerations exceed over 80 kph and 4 g respectively, raising significant challenges across perception, planning, control, and state estimation. To achieve maximum performance, systems require real-time algorithms that are robust to motion blur, high dynamic range, model uncertainties, aerodynamic disturbances, and often unpredictable opponents. This survey covers the progression of autonomous drone racing across model-based and learning-based approaches. We provide an overview of the field, its evolution over the years, and conclude with the biggest challenges and open questions to be faced in the future.

Key facts. Cited by 35 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 4 Jan 2023.

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 3; 2024: 6; 2025: 18; 2026: 8.

35 papers.

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  1. 2024Bootstrapping Reinforcement Learning with Imitation for Vision-Based Agile Flightcited by 31
  2. 2023Contrastive Learning for Enhancing Robust Scene Transfer in Vision-based Agile Flightcited by 15
  3. 2025Dream to Fly: Model-Based Reinforcement Learning for Vision-Based Drone Flightcited by 15
  4. 2025GRaD-Nav++: Vision-Language Model Enabled Visual Drone Navigation with Gaussian Radiance Fields and Differentiable Dynamicscited by 14
  5. 2023Vision-based Learning for Drones: A Surveycited by 11
  6. 2025RAPTOR: A Foundation Policy for Quadrotor Controlcited by 8
  7. 2025GRaD-Nav: Efficiently Learning Visual Drone Navigation with Gaussian Radiance Fields and Differentiable Dynamicscited by 7
  8. 2025One Net to Rule Them All: Domain Randomization in Quadcopter Racing Across Different Platformscited by 7
  9. 2024Environment as Policy: Learning to Race in Unseen Trackscited by 6
  10. 2025The Mini Wheelbot: A Testbed for Learning-based Balancing, Flips, and Articulated Drivingcited by 4
  11. 2025Agile Flight Emerges from Multi-Agent Competitive Racingcited by 4
  12. 2024InCrowd-VI: A Realistic Visual-Inertial Dataset for Evaluating SLAM in Indoor Pedestrian-Rich Spaces for Human Navigationcited by 3
23 more
  1. 2025Learned Controllers for Agile Quadrotors in Pursuit-Evasion Gamescited by 3
  2. 2025Predictive Uncertainty for Runtime Assurance of a Real-Time Computer Vision-Based Landing Systemcited by 3
  3. 2025Mastering Diverse, Unknown, and Cluttered Tracks for Robust Vision-Based Drone Racingcited by 3
  4. 2024Pushing the boundaries of event subsampling in event-based video classification using CNNscited by 2
  5. 2025Making Every Event Count: Balancing Data Efficiency and Accuracy in Event Camera Subsamplingcited by 2
  6. 2023Sim-to-Real Transfer of Adaptive Control Parameters for AUV Stabilization under Current Disturbancecited by 1
  7. 2024Reinforcement Learning with Lie Group Orientations for Roboticscited by 1
  8. 2025Towards Task-Oriented Flying: Framework, Infrastructure, and Principlescited by 1
  9. 2025Autonomous Navigation of Cloud-Controlled Quadcopters in Confined Spaces Using Multi-Modal Perception and LLM-Driven High Semantic Reasoningcited by 1
  10. 2025Autonomous UAV Flight Navigation in Confined Spaces: A Reinforcement Learning Approachcited by 1
  11. 2026Curriculum Reinforcement Learning for Quadrotor Racing with Random Obstaclescited by 1
  12. 2026Crazyflow: An Accurate, GPU-Accelerated, Differentiable Drone Simulator in JAXcited by 1
  13. 2024EvenNICER-SLAM: Event-based Neural Implicit Encoding SLAMcited by 0
  14. 2025Efficient and Accurate Downfacing Visual Inertial Odometrycited by 0
  15. 2025Unleashing the Power of Discrete-Time State Representation: Ultrafast Target-based IMU-Camera Spatial-Temporal Calibrationcited by 0
  16. 2025Orchestrate, Generate, Reflect: A VLM-Based Multi-Agent Collaboration Framework for Automated Driving Policy Learningcited by 0
  17. 2025Real-Time Learning of Predictive Dynamic Obstacle Models for Robotic Motion Planningcited by 0
  18. 2026Mitigating Data Scarcity in Spaceflight Applications for Offline Reinforcement Learning Using Physics-Informed Deep Generative Modelscited by 0
  19. 2026Vision-Guided Outdoor Flight and Obstacle Evasion via Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
  20. 2026MinNav: Minimalist Navigation Using Optical Flow For Active Tiny Aerial Robotscited by 0
  21. 2026Bridging Performance and Generalization in Reinforcement Learning for Agile Flightcited by 0
  22. 2026No Training, Better Flights: Test-Time Scaled VLMs for UAV Navigationcited by 0
  23. 2026GzDRL: Reproducible and Scalable Deep Reinforcement Learning with Gazebocited by 0