UT-RAM BORN COLLABORATION ON AGILE DRONE TEAMS PUBLISHED IN SCIENCE ROBOTICS

Thursday 27 November 2025

A new paper in the prestigious Science Robotics, originating from research at the University of Twente's RAM group, details a groundbreaking method for controlling teams of cable-suspended drones.

This work is the result of a long-standing collaboration between Prof. Antonio Franchi (RAM) and Dr. Sihao Sun (now at TU Delft), who began this research as a postdoctoral researcher under Prof. Franchi’s guidance at RAM.

The paper, "Agile and Cooperative Aerial Manipulation of a Cable-suspended Load," presents a model-based robust control and estimation algorithm that allows quadrotor teams to move a load with unprecedented agility, reporting more than eight times the acceleration of previous methods.

This publication stems from a research line initiated at UT. Dr. Sun began his work on cooperative cable-suspended aerial manipulation—one of Prof. Franchi's main research areas—while at RAM, a collaboration that led to their first joint paper in 2023 at the ICUAS conference. It was during this period that Dr. Sun also secured his prestigious NWO Veni grant.

The collaboration continued after Dr. Sun's move to TU Delft, with this Science Robotics paper being the latest major result.

This publication further highlights the RAM group's central role in fostering top-tier research. Two other key authors, Dr Dario Sanalitro (ISIR, Paris) and Dr Marco Tognon (INRIA, France), are also former PhD students of Prof. Franchi's team when he was a CNRS researcher at LAAS-CNRS in France. The international team was completed by collaborators Dr. Xuerui Wang and Prof. Javier Alonso-Mora from TU Delft.

"This paper is a perfect example of how long-term vision and collaboration lead to real breakthroughs," said Prof. Franchi. "We are incredibly proud of the foundational work we started in our teams at LAAS-CNRS before and now continues at UT-RAM, and it has been a pleasure to continue this journey with Dr. Sun and our former students."

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