Publications

In our recent Nature article, we present “Bee-Nav”, a robot navigation strategy inspired by honeybees. It allows even very small robots to travel far away from home and return successfully, using a neural memory of only 42 kilobytes. In a new environment, the robot first performs a short learning flight near home, just as honeybees do. After that, it can travel away for hundreds of meters and still find its way back. Bee-Nav enables lightweight, safe robots to navigate on their own, opening the door to applications such as butterfly-like drones monitoring greenhouses. The research also offers new insight into how flying insects may find their way home.

Ou, Dequan, Hagenaars, Jesse J., Jankowski, Maciej R., Firlefyn, Michiel V. M., De Wagter, Christophe, Muijres, Florian T., Degen, Jacqueline, de Croon, Guido C. H. E.: Efficient robot navigation inspired by honeybee learning flights. In: Nature, vol. xx, iss. yy, 2026, ISBN: 1476-4687.

In our recent Nature article, we developed a new theory on how flying drones and insects can estimate gravity direction by combining visual motion sensing with a model of how they move. This discovery forms a parsimonious explanation of multiple phenomena observed in biology and is also an important step for the creation of autonomous tiny drones with even fewer sensors. 

Guido C. H. E. Croon, Julien J. G. Dupeyroux, Christophe De Wagter, Abhishek Chatterjee, Diana A. Olejnik, Franck Ruffier: Accommodating unobservability to control flight attitude with optic flow. In: Nature, vol. 610, no. 7932, pp. 485–490, 2022, ISSN: 0028-0836.
 

Nature Machine Intelligence Paper

Whereas insects seem to control their flight effortlessly with the help of optical flow, robots that attempt to do the same run into problems. We propose as a solution a learning process that allows robots to see distances by means of visual appearance (colors, textures, shapes). Would it be possible that insects do the same?

The article is featured on the cover of Nature Machine Intelligence. Cover reprinted by permission from Springer Nature.

G.C.H.E. de Croon, C. De Wagter, T. Seidl: Enhancing optical-flow-based control by learning visual appearance cues for flying robots. In: Nature Machine Intelligence, vol. 3, no. 1, 2021.

 

Science Robotics Paper

Our recent paper in Science Robotics presents the first swarm of tiny robots that can explore unknown environments completely by themselves. No map, no memory, and no GPS! The full paper can be found here.

K N McGuire, C De Wagter, K Tuyls, H J Kappen, G C H E de Croon: Minimal navigation solution for a swarm of tiny flying robots to explore an unknown environment. In: Science Robotics, vol. 4, no. 35, 2019.

 

Delfly Book

 

Our book about the DelFly has been published! The book introduces the topics most relevant to autonomously flying flapping-wing robots: flapping-wing design, aerodynamics, and artificial intelligence.

 

G C H E de Croon, Mustafa Percin, B D W Remes, Rick Ruijsink, C De Wagter: The DelFly - Design, Aerodynamics, and Artificial Intelligence of a Flapping Wing Robot. Springer Netherlands, 2016, ISBN: 978-94-017-9207-3.

 

Science paper

 

 

The Delfly Nimble was featured on the cover of Science Magazine in September 2018.

 

Matěj Karásek, Florian T Muijres, Christophe De Wagter, Bart D W Remes, Guido C H E de Croon: A tailless aerial robotic flapper reveals that flies use torque coupling in rapid banked turns. In: Science, vol. 361, no. 6407, pp. 1089–1094, 2018, ISSN: 0036-8075.

 

 

 

 

All publications

843 entries « 1 of 17 »

2026

Journal Articles

Ou, Dequan; Hagenaars, Jesse J.; Jankowski, Maciej R.; Firlefyn, Michiel V. M.; De Wagter, Christophe; Muijres, Florian T.; Degen, Jacqueline; de Croon, Guido C. H. E.

Efficient robot navigation inspired by honeybee learning flights (Journal Article)

In: Nature, vol. xx, iss. yy, 2026, ISBN: 1476-4687.

(Links | BibTeX)

Barbara Webb

Bee-inspired navigation robot pinpoints its home using a neural network (Journal Article)

In: Nature, vol. xx, iss. yy, 2026, ISSN: 1476-4687.

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Rita Santos Raminhos; Salua Hamaza

Task-Oriented Path Planning Towards Autonomous Sensor Network Deployment in Rainforest Canopies (Journal Article)

In: Advanced Robotics Research, vol. n/a, no. n/a, pp. e202500198, 2026, ISSN: 2943-9973.

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Evangelos Ntouros; Ewoud J. J. Smeur

Guiding-Vector-Field-Based Guidance Under Wind Disturbances Applied to a Tailsitter Drone (Journal Article)

In: Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, 2026, ISSN: 0731-5090.

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Anique Altena; Mirjam Snellen; Guido Croon; Mark Voskuijl

Joint sound source localisation of drones and other background sources (Journal Article)

In: Applied Acoustics, vol. 254, 2026, ISSN: 0003-682X.

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Moji Shi; Rajitha De Silva; Hang Yu; Riccardo Polvara; Marija Popovic

Perception-Aware Autonomous Exploration in Feature-Limited Environments (Journal Article)

In: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 11, no. 8, pp. 9970–9977, 2026, ISSN: 2377-3766.

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L. Zheng; A. H. Zuijlen; S. Hamaza

A squirrel-inspired drone with enhanced stability, agility and maneuverability via whole-body morphing (Journal Article)

In: Nature Communications, 2026, ISSN: 2041-1723.

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Salil Luesutthiviboon; Guido C. H. E. Croon; Anique Altena; Mirjam Snellen; Mark Voskuijl

Improving visual differentiation of drones and birds in aerial surveillance using trajectory features (Journal Article)

In: Neural Computing and Applications, vol. 38, no. 12, 2026, ISSN: 0941-0643.

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Jasper Zevering; Joshua Braun; Martin Hesse; Kedus Mathewos; Dorit Borrmann; Anton Bredenbeck; Andreas Nüchter

The Concept of the Virtual Pose Instruction Plane (VPIP) for Controlling Rod-Driven Spherical Robots (Journal Article)

In: Machines, vol. 14, no. 5, 2026, ISSN: 2075-1702.

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Dequan Ou; Jesse J. Hagenaars; Maciej R. Jankowski; Michiel V. M. Firlefyn; Christophe De Wagter; Florian T. Muijres; Jacqueline Degen; Guido C. H. E. Croon

Efficient robot navigation inspired by honeybee learning flights (Journal Article)

In: Nature, vol. 653, no. 8116, pp. 1039–1046, 2026, ISSN: 0028-0836.

(Links | BibTeX)

Sunyi Wang; Martijn Hoed; Salua Hamaza

Delfly Flex: a flapping wing micro air vehicle with a bio-inspired unibody composed of compliant joints (Journal Article)

In: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, vol. 21, no. 3, 2026, ISSN: 1748-3182.

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Evangelos Ntouros; Pavel Kelley; Ewoud J. J. Smeur

Airspeed estimation for UAVs using only propeller feedback (Journal Article)

In: Aerospace Science and Technology, vol. 168, 2026, ISSN: 1270-9638.

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Ernesto Sanchez-Laulhe; Guido C. H. E. De Croon; Anibal Ollero

Equilibrium State for a Tailless Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicle in Forward Flight (Journal Article)

In: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 17–24, 2026, ISSN: 2377-3766, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository as part of the Taverne amendment. More information about this copyright law amendment can be found at https://www.openaccess.nl. Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.).

(Links | BibTeX)

S. Hafner; T. De Ponti; E. Smeur

On the Equivalence of Sensory and Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (Journal Article)

In: IEEE Open Journal of Control Systems, vol. 5, pp. 136–148, 2026, ISSN: 2694-085X.

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Tomaso De Ponti; Simon Hafner; Ewoud Smeur; Bart Remes

Actuator nonlinear dynamic inversion for the variable skew quad plane with heterogeneous motor dynamics (Journal Article)

In: Control Engineering Practice, vol. 171, 2026, ISSN: 0967-0661.

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Book Chapters

Guoling Yang; Marija Popovic; Ronald Clark; Mirko Kovac; Basaran Bahadir Kocer

Synthetic Data Augmented Leaflet-Level Ash Dieback Detection (Book Chapter)

In: Studies in Computational Intelligence, pp. 203–224, Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH, 2026.

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Proceedings Articles

Baihui Chen; Tomas Sinnige; Ewoud Smeur

Efficient Modeling of a Tilted Propeller–Wing System over a Wide Angle-of-Attack Range Based on Wind Tunnel and CFD Data (Proceedings Article)

In: AIAA AVIATION 2026 Forum, 2026, (AIAA AVIATION 2026 Forum ; Conference date: 08-06-2026 Through 12-06-2026).

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Miscellaneous

Evangelos Ntouros; Ewoud J. J. Smeur

Coordinated Incremental Trajectory Tracking of a Tailsitter Drone (Miscellaneous)

2026.

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Tom Aantjes; Till M. Blaha; Spilios Theodoulis; Ewoud J. J. Smeur

Robust $mathcalH_ınfty$ Controller Design For INDI-Controlled Quadrotor Using Online Parameter Identification (Miscellaneous)

2026.

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Liming Zheng; Baihui Chen; Alexander Zuijlen; Salua Hamaza

Patagium and tail morphology shape aerodynamic performance and control authority in gliding-mammal-inspired wings (Miscellaneous)

2026.

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Lars Oerlemans; Moji Shi; Marija Popovic

UGV-Conditioned Multi-UAV Informative Planning on a Shared Exposure Belief (Miscellaneous)

2026.

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Sanjeev Ramkumar Sudha; Marija Popović; Erlend M. Coates

MPPI-based Informative Trajectory Planning for Search and Capture of Drifting Targets with ASVs (Miscellaneous)

2026.

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Jacob Swindell; Michael Lowen; Marija Popovic; Riccardo Polvara

Droneulator: A Portable UAV Simulator for Agricultural Workflows with RotorPy and Godot 4 (Miscellaneous)

2026.

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Lohithsai Yadala Chanchu; Ruben Zuidgeest; D. M. (Daphne) Stam; Guido Croon

Data underlying publication: Robust Heading Estimation from Polarization Images by Deep Neural Networks (Miscellaneous)

2026.

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Yun-Ching Lin; Richard Huizenga; Hyun-Sik Kim; Hans Brouwer; Amir Mohseni Armaki; Vera Popovich; Yinglu Tang

XRD and Raman spectroscopy datasets of pristine and isothermally oxidized spark plasma sintered ZrC ultra-high temperature ceramic (Miscellaneous)

2026.

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Stavrow A. Bahnam; Robin Ferede; Till M. Blaha; Anton E. Lang; Erin Lucassen; Quentin Missinne; Aderik E. C. Verraest; Christophe De Wagter; Guido C. H. E. Croon

MonoRace: Winning Champion-Level Drone Racing with Robust Monocular AI (Miscellaneous)

2026.

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Evangelos Ntouros; Ewoud J. J. Smeur

Guiding vector field-based guidance under wind disturbances applied to a tailsitter UAV (Miscellaneous)

2026.

(Links | BibTeX)

Jacob Swindell; Marija Popović; Riccardo Polvara

Active Informative Planning for UAV-based Weed Mapping using Discrete Gaussian Process Representations (Miscellaneous)

2026.

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Srividya Hariharan Sudha; Elisa Ragno; Ruud van der Ent; O. (Oswaldo) Morales Nápoles

Supporting data and code for: Hydrological response to drought-flood and flood-drought transitions in the Geul River basin, Netherlands (Miscellaneous)

2026.

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Martijn B. J. Brummelhuis; Nathan F. Lepora; Salua Hamaza

Omnidirectional Dual-Arm Aerial Manipulator with Proprioceptive Contact Localization for Landing on Slanted Roofs (Miscellaneous)

2026.

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Moji Shi; Rajitha Silva; Hang Yu; Riccardo Polvara; Marija Popović

Perception-Aware Autonomous Exploration in Feature-Limited Environments (Miscellaneous)

2026.

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Jacob Elskamp; Moji Shi; Leonard Bauersfeld; Davide Scaramuzza; Marija Popović

EAAE: Energy-Aware Autonomous Exploration for UAVs in Unknown 3D Environments (Miscellaneous)

2026.

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Rajitha Silva; Jonathan Cox; James R. Heselden; Marija Popović; Cesar Cadena; Riccardo Polvara

Semantic Landmark Particle Filter for Robot Localisation in Vineyards (Miscellaneous)

2026.

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Tomaso De Ponti; Simon Hafner; Ewoud Smeur

Test Data of Actuator nonlinear dynamic inversion for the variable skew quad plane with heterogeneous motor dynamics (Miscellaneous)

2026.

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Jane Pauline Ramirez; Salua Hamaza

Aerial Terrestrial Multimodal Robots Database (Miscellaneous)

2026.

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Guido Croon; Dequan Ou; Christophe De Wagter; Jesse Hagenaars

Bee-Nav: Data supporting the publication (Miscellaneous)

2026.

(Links | BibTeX)

Sunyi Wang; Martijn Hoed; Salua Hamaza

Data supporting the publication: Delfly Flex: A Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicle with a Bio-Inspired Unibody Composed of Compliant Joints (Miscellaneous)

2026.

(Links | BibTeX)

2025

Journal Articles

Anton Bredenbeck; Cosimo Della Santina; Salua Hamaza

Embodying Compliant Touch on Drones for Aerial Tactile Navigation (Journal Article)

In: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 1209–1216, 2025, ISSN: 2377-3766, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.).

(Links | BibTeX)

Yingfu Xu; Guido C. H. E. Croon

CUAHN-VIO: Content-and-uncertainty-aware homography network for visual-inertial odometry (Journal Article)

In: Robotics and Autonomous Systems, vol. 185, 2025, ISSN: 0921-8890.

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Till M. Blaha; Mike M. Kuijper; Radu Pop; Ewoud J. J. Smeur

Rapid and Inexpensive Inertia Tensor Estimation From a Single Object Throw (Journal Article)

In: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 10, no. 7, pp. 7365–7371, 2025, ISSN: 2377-3766.

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Saeed Rafee Nekoo; Ramy Rashad; Christophe De Wagter; Sawyer B. Fuller; Guido de Croon; Stefano Stramigioli; Anibal Ollero

A review on flapping-wing robots: Recent progress and challenges (Journal Article)

In: International Journal of Robotics Research, 2025, ISSN: 0278-3649.

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Stephen Pringle; Martin Dallimer; Mark A. Goddard; Léni K. Le Goff; Emma Hart; Simon J. Langdale; Jessica C. Fisher; Sara Adela Abad; Salua Hamaza; More Authors

Opportunities and challenges for monitoring terrestrial biodiversity in the robotics age (Journal Article)

In: Nature Ecology and Evolution, vol. 9, no. 6, pp. 1031–1042, 2025, ISSN: 2397-334X.

(Links | BibTeX)

Tomaso Maria Luigi De Ponti; Ewoud Jan Jacob Smeur; Bart Diane Walter Remes

Unified-Actuator Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion Controller for the Variable Skew Quad Plane (Journal Article)

In: Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, vol. 48, no. 5, pp. 1167–1176, 2025, ISSN: 0731-5090, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.).

(Links | BibTeX)

S. T. Hazelaar; C. Wang; C. Wagter; Florian T. Muijres; G. C. H. E. Croon; M. Yedutenko

Bioinspired adaptive visual servoing control for quadrotors (Journal Article)

In: Bioinspiration & Biomimetics: learning from nature, vol. 20, no. 3, 2025, ISSN: 1748-3182.

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Ziqing Ma; Ewoud J. J. Smeur; Guido C. H. E. De Croon

Design and Control of A Tilt-Rotor Tailsitter Aircraft with Pivoting VTOL Capability (Journal Article)

In: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 10, no. 6, pp. 5911 – 5918, 2025, ISSN: 2377-3766, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.).

(Links | BibTeX)

Yingfu Xu; Guangzhi Tang; Amirreza Yousefzadeh; Guido C. H. E. Croon; Manolis Sifalakis

Event-based optical flow on neuromorphic processor: ANN vs. SNN comparison based on activation sparsification (Journal Article)

In: Neural Networks, vol. 188, 2025, ISSN: 0893-6080, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.).

(Links | BibTeX)

S. Stroobants; C. De Wagter; G. C. H. E. De Croon

Neuromorphic Attitude Estimation and Control (Journal Article)

In: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 10, no. 5, 2025, ISSN: 2377-3766, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.).

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Jason Yik; Korneel Van den Berghe; Douwe Blanken; Younes Bouhadjar; Maxime Fabre; Aurora Micheli; Guido Croon; Nergis Tömen; Charlotte Frenkel; More Authors

The neurobench framework for benchmarking neuromorphic computing algorithms and systems (Journal Article)

In: Nature Communications, vol. 16, no. 1, 2025, ISSN: 2041-1723.

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Hang Yu; Christophe De Wagter; Guido C. H. E. De Croon

MAVRL: Learn to Fly in Cluttered Environments With Varying Speed (Journal Article)

In: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 1441–1448, 2025, ISSN: 2377-3766, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.).

(Links | BibTeX)

Shushuai Li; Feng Shan; Jiangpeng Liu; Mario Coppola; Christophe De Wagter; Guido C. H. E. De Croon

Onboard Ranging-based Relative Localization and Stability for Lightweight Aerial Swarms (Journal Article)

In: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 10, no. 10, pp. 10066–10073, 2025, ISSN: 2377-3766, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository as part of the Taverne amendment. More information about this copyright law amendment can be found at https://www.openaccess.nl. Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.).

(Links | BibTeX)

843 entries « 1 of 17 »