AeroThrow: An Autonomous Aerial Throwing System for Precise Payload Delivery

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters

Ziliang Li*   Hongming Chen*   Yiyang Lin    Biyu Ye   Ximin Lyu✉
Bilibili Code

Abstract

Autonomous aerial systems are increasingly essential for transportation and delivery tasks in complex environments where ground access is limited or unsafe for direct placement. In airdrop missions, these platforms face the dual challenges of abrupt control mode switching and inherent system delays along with control errors. To address these issues, this paper presents an autonomous airdrop system based on an aerial manipulator (AM). The introduction of additional actuated degrees of freedom (DoF) enables active compensation for UAV tracking errors. By imposing smooth and continuous constraints on the parabolic landing point, the proposed approach generates aerial throwing trajectories that are less sensitive to the timing of payload release. A hierarchical disturbance compensation strategy is incorporated into the Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) framework to mitigate the effects of sudden changes in system parameters, while the predictive capabilities of NMPC are further exploited to improve the precision of aerial throwing. Both simulation and real-world experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system achieves greater agility and precision in airdrop missions.

Real-World Result

Real-world Experimental Result 1

Real-World Experiments

(playing speed: 1x)

Strike Task

Cross Task

Grasp Task

BibTeX

@misc{li2025aerothrowautonomousaerialthrowing,
      title={AeroThrow: An Autonomous Aerial Throwing System for Precise Payload Delivery}, 
      author={Ziliang Li and Hongming Chen and Yiyang Lin and Biyu Ye and Ximin Lyu},
      year={2025},
      eprint={2507.13903},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.RO},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13903}, 
}

@inproceedings{Chen_2025,
   title={NDOB-Based Control of a UAV with Delta-Arm Considering Manipulator Dynamics},
   url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICRA55743.2025.11127414},
   DOI={10.1109/icra55743.2025.11127414},
   booktitle={2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)},
   publisher={IEEE},
   author={Chen, Hongming and Ye, Biyu and Liang, Xianqi and Deng, Weiliang and Lyu, Ximin},
   year={2025},
   month=may, pages={7505-7511} }