Bingheng Wang

Bingheng Wang, Zhengtian Ma, Shupeng Lai et al.

Estimating and reacting to disturbances is crucial for robust flight control of quadrotors. Existing estimators typically require significant tuning for a specific flight scenario or training with extensive ground-truth disturbance data to achieve satisfactory performance. In this paper, we propose a neural moving horizon estimator (NeuroMHE) that can automatically tune its key parameters modeled by a neural network and adapt to different flight scenarios. We achieve this by deriving the analytical gradients of the MHE estimates with respect to the MHE weighting matrices, which enables a seamless embedding of the MHE as a learnable layer into the neural network for highly effective learning. Interestingly, we show that the gradients can be computed efficiently using a Kalman filter in a recursive form. Moreover, we develop a model-based policy gradient algorithm to train NeuroMHE directly from the quadrotor trajectory tracking error without needing the ground-truth disturbance data. The effectiveness of NeuroMHE is verified extensively via both simulations and physical experiments on quadrotors in various challenging flights. Notably, NeuroMHE outperforms a state-of-the-art neural network-based estimator, reducing force estimation errors by up to 76.7%, while using a portable neural network that has only 7.7% of the learnable parameters of the latter. The proposed method is general and can be applied to robust adaptive control of other robotic systems.

Xiexin Peng, Bingheng Wang, Tao Zhang et al.

Disturbance observer-based control has shown promise in robustifying robotic systems against uncertainties. However, tuning such systems remains challenging due to the strong coupling between controller gains and observer parameters. In this work, we propose MetaTune, a unified framework for joint auto-tuning of feedback controllers and disturbance observers through differentiable closed-loop meta-learning. MetaTune integrates a portable neural policy with physics-informed gradients derived from differentiable system dynamics, enabling adaptive gain across tasks and operating conditions. We develop an adjoint method that efficiently computes the meta-gradients with respect to adaptive gains backward in time to directly minimize the cost-to-go. Compared to existing forward methods, our approach reduces the computational complexity to be linear in the data horizon. Experimental results on quadrotor control show that MetaTune achieves consistent improvements over state-of-the-art differentiable tuning methods while reducing gradient computation time by more than 50 percent. In high-fidelity PX4-Gazebo hardware-in-the-loop simulation, the learned adaptive policy yields 15-20 percent average tracking error reduction at aggressive flight speeds and up to 40 percent improvement under strong disturbances, while demonstrating zero-shot sim-to-sim transfer without fine-tuning.

Bingheng Wang, Yichao Gao, Tianchen Sun et al.

Distributed trajectory optimization via ADMM-DDP is a powerful approach for coordinating multi-agent systems, but it requires extensive tuning of tightly coupled hyperparameters that jointly govern local task performance and global coordination. In this paper, we propose Learning to Coordinate (L2C), a general framework that meta-learns these hyperparameters, modeled by lightweight agent-wise neural networks, to adapt across diverse tasks and agent configurations. L2C differentiates end-to-end through the ADMM-DDP pipeline in a distributed manner. It also enables efficient meta-gradient computation by reusing DDP components such as Riccati recursions and feedback gains. These gradients correspond to the optimal solutions of distributed matrix-valued LQR problems, coordinated across agents via an auxiliary ADMM framework that becomes convex under mild assumptions. Training is further accelerated by truncating iterations and meta-learning ADMM penalty parameters optimized for rapid residual reduction, with provable Lipschitz-bounded gradient errors. On a challenging cooperative aerial transport task, L2C generates dynamically feasible trajectories in high-fidelity simulation using IsaacSIM, reconfigures quadrotor formations for safe 6-DoF load manipulation in tight spaces, and adapts robustly to varying team sizes and task conditions, while achieving up to $88\%$ faster gradient computation than state-of-the-art methods.

Xu Weng, K. V. Ling, Haochen Liu et al.

GNSS localization using everyday mobile devices is challenging in urban environments, as ranging errors caused by the complex propagation of satellite signals and low-quality onboard GNSS hardware are blamed for undermining positioning accuracy. Researchers have pinned their hopes on data-driven methods to regress such ranging errors from raw measurements. However, the grueling annotation of ranging errors impedes their pace. This paper presents a robust end-to-end Neural Ranging Correction (NeRC) framework, where localization-related metrics serve as the task objective for training the neural modules. Instead of seeking impractical ranging error labels, we train the neural network using ground-truth locations that are relatively easy to obtain. This functionality is supported by differentiable moving horizon location estimation (MHE) that handles a horizon of measurements for positioning and backpropagates the gradients for training. Even better, as a blessing of end-to-end learning, we propose a new training paradigm using Euclidean Distance Field (EDF) cost maps, which alleviates the demands on labeled locations. We evaluate the proposed NeRC on public benchmarks and our collected datasets, demonstrating its distinguished improvement in positioning accuracy. We also deploy NeRC on the edge to verify its real-time performance for mobile devices.

Bingheng Wang, Zhengtian Ma, Shupeng Lai et al.

Estimating and reacting to external disturbances is of fundamental importance for robust control of quadrotors. Existing estimators typically require significant tuning or training with a large amount of data, including the ground truth, to achieve satisfactory performance. This paper proposes a data-efficient differentiable moving horizon estimation (DMHE) algorithm that can automatically tune the MHE parameters online and also adapt to different scenarios. We achieve this by deriving the analytical gradient of the estimated trajectory from MHE with respect to the tuning parameters, enabling end-to-end learning for auto-tuning. Most interestingly, we show that the gradient can be calculated efficiently from a Kalman filter in a recursive form. Moreover, we develop a model-based policy gradient algorithm to learn the parameters directly from the trajectory tracking errors without the need for the ground truth. The proposed DMHE can be further embedded as a layer with other neural networks for joint optimization. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method via both simulation and experiments on quadrotors, where challenging scenarios such as sudden payload change and flying in downwash are examined.

Hua Chen, Bingheng Wang, Zejun Hong et al.

This paper studies jumping for wheeled-bipedal robots, a motion that takes full advantage of the benefits from the hybrid wheeled and legged design features. A comprehensive hierarchical scheme for motion planning and control of jumping with wheeled-bipedal robots is developed. Underactuation of the wheeled-bipedal dynamics is the main difficulty to be addressed, especially in the planning problem. To tackle this issue, a novel wheeled-spring-loaded inverted pendulum (W-SLIP) model is proposed to characterize the essential dynamics of wheeled-bipedal robots during jumping. Relying on a differential-flatness-like property of the W-SLIP model, a tractable quadratic programming based solution is devised for planning jumping motions for wheeled-bipedal robots. Combined with a kinematic planning scheme accounting for the flight phase motion, a complete planning scheme for the W-SLIP model is developed. To enable accurate tracking of the planned trajectories, a linear quadratic regulator based wheel controller and a task-space whole-body controller for the other joints are blended through disturbance observers. The overall planning and control scheme is validated using V-REP simulations of a prototype wheeled-bipedal robot.