# Large Language Models for UAVs: Current State and Pathways to the Future

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.01745 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.01745/

## Key facts

- Cited by 33 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 107 of its 235 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 May 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 107)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10683/) (2019)
- [RoBERTa: A Robustly Optimized BERT Pretraining Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.11692/) (2019)
- [Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06180/) (2023)
- [BART: Denoising Sequence-to-Sequence Pre-training for Natural Language Generation, Translation, and Comprehension](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.13461/) (2019)
- [DistilBERT, a distilled version of BERT: smaller, faster, cheaper and lighter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.01108/) (2019)
- [XLNet: Generalized Autoregressive Pretraining for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08237/) (2019)
- [ALBERT: A Lite BERT for Self-supervised Learning of Language Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.11942/) (2019)
- [A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11432/) (2023)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10997/) (2023)
- [mT5: A massively multilingual pre-trained text-to-text transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11934/) (2020)
- [The Rise and Potential of Large Language Model Based Agents: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07864/) (2023)
- [A Survey on Evaluation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03109/) (2023)
- [BERT4Rec: Sequential Recommendation with Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.06690/) (2019)
- [A Survey on Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13549/) (2023)
- [ExpeL: LLM Agents Are Experiential Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10144/) (2023)
- [Time-LLM: Time Series Forecasting by Reprogramming Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01728/) (2023)
- [LLM-Pruner: On the Structural Pruning of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11627/) (2023)
- [A Comprehensive Overview of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.06435/) (2023)
- [Instruction Tuning for Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10792/) (2023)
- [Towards Reasoning in Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10403/) (2022)
- [Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.06196/) (2024)
- [Sentence-T5: Scalable Sentence Encoders from Pre-trained Text-to-Text Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08877/) (2021)
- [Harnessing the Power of LLMs in Practice: A Survey on ChatGPT and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13712/) (2023)
- [Augmented Language Models: a Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.07842/) (2023)
- [A Survey on Large Language Model (LLM) Security and Privacy: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02003/) (2023)
- [How Good Are GPT Models at Machine Translation? A Comprehensive Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.09210/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 33)

- [A Survey on Large Language Models for Communication, Network, and Service Management: Application Insights, Challenges, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.19823/) (2024)
- [100 instances is all you need: predicting the success of a new LLM on unseen data by testing on a few instances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.03563/) (2024)
- [Embodied AI: From LLMs to World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.20021/) (2025)
- [Integrating LLMs with ITS: Recent Advances, Potentials, Challenges, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.04437/) (2025)
- [UAVs Meet Agentic AI: A Multidomain Survey of Autonomous Aerial Intelligence and Agentic UAVs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.08045/) (2025)
- [UAVBench: An Open Benchmark Dataset for Autonomous and Agentic AI UAV Systems via LLM-Generated Flight Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.11252/) (2025)
- [LLM-Enabled In-Context Learning for Data Collection Scheduling in UAV-assisted Sensor Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14556/) (2025)
- [AerialVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for UAV Navigation via Minimalist End-to-End Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14363/) (2026)
- [Leveraging Large Language Models for Integrated Satellite-Aerial-Terrestrial Networks: Recent Advances and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.04581/) (2024)
- [From Prompts to Protection: Large Language Model-Enabled In-Context Learning for Smart Public Safety UAV](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02649/) (2025)
- [Next-Generation LLM for UAV: From Natural Language to Autonomous Flight](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.21739/) (2025)
- [Safe LLM-Controlled Robots with Formal Guarantees via Reachability Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.03911/) (2025)
- [General-Purpose Aerial Intelligent Agents Empowered by Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08302/) (2025)
- [PredictaBoard: Benchmarking LLM Score Predictability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.14445/) (2025)
- [RALLY: Role-Adaptive LLM-Driven Yoked Navigation for Agentic UAV Swarms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.01378/) (2025)
- [Agentic UAVs: LLM-Driven Autonomy with Integrated Tool-Calling and Cognitive Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.13352/) (2025)
- [Taking Flight with Dialogue: Enabling Natural Language Control for PX4-based Drone Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07509/) (2025)
- [FRSICL: LLM-Enabled In-Context Learning Flight Resource Allocation for Fresh Data Collection in UAV-Assisted Wildfire Monitoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.10134/) (2025)
- [Large Language Model-Assisted UAV Operations and Communications: A Multifaceted Survey and Tutorial](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.19534/) (2026)
- [Interpretable Risk Mitigation in LLM Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10670/) (2025)
- [A Hierarchical Agentic Framework for Autonomous Drone-Based Visual Inspection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.00259/) (2025)
- [A4FN: an Agentic AI Architecture for Autonomous Flying Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.03829/) (2025)
- [Autonomous Navigation of Cloud-Controlled Quadcopters in Confined Spaces Using Multi-Modal Perception and LLM-Driven High Semantic Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.07885/) (2025)
- [AIC-VDS: Attention-Based In-Context Learning for Joint Velocity Control and Data Collection Scheduling in Multi-UAV-Assisted Pipeline Monitoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.05698/) (2025)
- [Human-Inspired Neuro-Symbolic World Modeling and Logic Reasoning for Interpretable Safe UAV Landing Site Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.22204/) (2025)
- [Chat with UAV -- Human-UAV Interaction Based on Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.08145/) (2025)
- [Semantic-Aware Edge Intelligence for UAV Handover in 6G Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22668/) (2025)
- [Large Multimodal Models-Empowered Task-Oriented Autonomous Communications: Design Methodology and Implementation Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.20637/) (2025)
- [PrivLLMSwarm: Privacy-Preserving LLM-Driven UAV Swarms for Secure IoT Surveillance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.06747/) (2025)
- [Bridging Network Fragmentation: A Semantic-Augmented DRL Framework for UAV-aided VANETs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.18871/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have emerged as a transformative technology across diverse sectors, offering adaptable solutions to complex challenges in both military and civilian domains. Their expanding capabilities present a platform for further advancement by integrating cutting-edge computational tools like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms. These advancements have significantly impacted various facets of human life, fostering an era of unparalleled efficiency and convenience. Large Language Models (LLMs), a key component of AI, exhibit remarkable learning and adaptation capabilities within deployed environments, demonstrating an evolving form of intelligence with the potential to approach human-level proficiency. This work explores the significant potential of integrating UAVs and LLMs to propel the development of autonomous systems. We comprehensively review LLM architectures, evaluating their suitability for UAV integration. Additionally, we summarize the state-of-the-art LLM-based UAV architectures and identify novel opportunities for LLM embedding within UAV frameworks. Notably, we focus on leveraging LLMs to refine data analysis and decision-making processes, specifically for enhanced spectral sensing and sharing in UAV applications. Furthermore, we investigate how LLM integration expands the scope of existing UAV applications, enabling autonomous data processing, improved decision-making, and faster response times in emergency scenarios like disaster response and network restoration. Finally, we highlight crucial areas for future research that are critical for facilitating the effective integration of LLMs and UAVs.