Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bosello, Michael, Pinzarrone, Flavio, Kiade, Sara, Aguiari, Davide, Keuter, Yvo, AlShehhi, Aaesha, Caminati, Gyordan, Wong, Kei Long, Chou, Ka Seng, Halepota, Junaid, Alneyadi, Fares, Panerati, Jacopo, Pau, Giovanni
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.13644
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917234047188992
author Bosello, Michael
Pinzarrone, Flavio
Kiade, Sara
Aguiari, Davide
Keuter, Yvo
AlShehhi, Aaesha
Caminati, Gyordan
Wong, Kei Long
Chou, Ka Seng
Halepota, Junaid
Alneyadi, Fares
Panerati, Jacopo
Pau, Giovanni
author_facet Bosello, Michael
Pinzarrone, Flavio
Kiade, Sara
Aguiari, Davide
Keuter, Yvo
AlShehhi, Aaesha
Caminati, Gyordan
Wong, Kei Long
Chou, Ka Seng
Halepota, Junaid
Alneyadi, Fares
Panerati, Jacopo
Pau, Giovanni
contents Drone technology is proliferating in many industries, including agriculture, logistics, defense, infrastructure, and environmental monitoring. Vision-based autonomy is one of its key enablers, particularly for real-world applications. This is essential for operating in novel, unstructured environments where traditional navigation methods may be unavailable. Autonomous drone racing has become the de facto benchmark for such systems. State-of-the-art research has shown that autonomous systems can surpass human-level performance in racing arenas. However, the direct applicability to commercial and field operations is still limited, as current systems are often trained and evaluated in highly controlled environments. In our contribution, the system's capabilities are analyzed within a controlled environment -- where external tracking is available for ground-truth comparison -- but also demonstrated in a challenging, uninstrumented environment -- where ground-truth measurements were never available. We show that our approach can match the performance of professional human pilots in both scenarios.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_13644
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On Your Own: Pro-level Autonomous Drone Racing in Uninstrumented Arenas
Bosello, Michael
Pinzarrone, Flavio
Kiade, Sara
Aguiari, Davide
Keuter, Yvo
AlShehhi, Aaesha
Caminati, Gyordan
Wong, Kei Long
Chou, Ka Seng
Halepota, Junaid
Alneyadi, Fares
Panerati, Jacopo
Pau, Giovanni
Robotics
Drone technology is proliferating in many industries, including agriculture, logistics, defense, infrastructure, and environmental monitoring. Vision-based autonomy is one of its key enablers, particularly for real-world applications. This is essential for operating in novel, unstructured environments where traditional navigation methods may be unavailable. Autonomous drone racing has become the de facto benchmark for such systems. State-of-the-art research has shown that autonomous systems can surpass human-level performance in racing arenas. However, the direct applicability to commercial and field operations is still limited, as current systems are often trained and evaluated in highly controlled environments. In our contribution, the system's capabilities are analyzed within a controlled environment -- where external tracking is available for ground-truth comparison -- but also demonstrated in a challenging, uninstrumented environment -- where ground-truth measurements were never available. We show that our approach can match the performance of professional human pilots in both scenarios.
title On Your Own: Pro-level Autonomous Drone Racing in Uninstrumented Arenas
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.13644