Overview
DroneSys 2026 invites original research papers and position papers on the future of autonomous drone computing systems. As drones increasingly incorporate onboard AI, edge-assisted perception, collaborative autonomy, and real-time decision making, they raise distinctive systems challenges involving latency, reliability, energy, safety, communication, and deployment at scale.
The workshop emphasizes a computation-centric perspective on drone autonomy: how to design drone systems that are efficient, reliable, safe, secure, and deployable in real-world environments. The scope spans both fundamental systems research and application-driven studies that surface new requirements for aerial autonomy.
DroneSys aims to bring together researchers and practitioners from edge computing, mobile and embedded systems, robotics, networking, CPS, and applied AI to discuss computational foundations for next-generation drone systems.
Community-first by design. DroneSys is intentionally a focused community forum rather than a competitive mini-conference — a venue for candid discussion of early and exploratory work on drone systems problems that lack a dedicated home at systems venues.
Program
Room: Parlors C
- TwinFlight: An Open-Source Sim-To-Real Pipeline For Autonomous Drones
- IGNITE: A Multimodal UAV-Collected Dataset for Wildfire Detection
- HORIZON: Lightweight Mapless Navigation for Resource-Constrained Micro Robots in Dynamic Environments
- RT-RX: An Edge Computing Pipeline for Real-Time UAV Hyperspectral Anomaly Detection
- Fleets Need a Context Plane: Rethinking Cooperative Perception for Autonomous Drones
- Aerial Zero Trust: Secure Ad-hoc UAV Swarm Communication in Large, Contested Environments
- Beyond Valid Commands: Security Limits of Command Mediation in ROS2-PX4 UAVs
Important Dates
Topics of Interest
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Edge and embedded architectures for drone autonomy
- Onboard AI, efficient inference, and resource-aware autonomy
- Real-time perception, planning, and control
- Real-time sensor fusion on resource-constrained platforms
- Swarm intelligence, coordination, and drone-to-drone networking
- AI offloading, task migration, and air–ground–edge–cloud collaboration
- Safety, security, privacy, and trust in drone operations
- Benchmarks, testbeds, simulators, and real-world deployments
- Applications in public safety, agriculture, logistics, inspection, AR/VR-enhanced operations, and disaster response
- Human factors, policy, and regulation-aware drone systems
Submission Guidelines
- Only electronic submissions in PDF will be accepted.
- Submitted papers must be written in English and rendered without error using standard PDF viewing tools.
- Papers must be no longer than 6 single-spaced 8.5" × 11" pages, including figures and tables but excluding references, using 10-point type on 12-point leading, two-column format, Times Roman or similar font, within a text block 7.14" wide × 9.22" deep.
- Pages must be numbered, and figures and tables must be legible in black and white.
- Papers not meeting these criteria will be rejected without review.
- At least one author for each accepted paper must register for the workshop.
- Submissions should present original, unpublished work and must not be under review elsewhere.
- All submissions will undergo peer review.
- Accepted papers will be included in the workshop proceedings.
IEEE templates: https://www.ieee.org/conferences/publishing/templates.html
Submission website: https://dronesys26.hotcrp.com/
Organizing Committee
TPC Chairs
- Christopher Stewart
The Ohio State University - Liangkai Liu
Texas Tech University
Program Committee
- Jayson Boubin
SUNY Binghamton - Karthik Dantu
University at Buffalo - Ting Zhu
Ohio State University - Liangkai Liu
Texas Tech University - Chuchu Chen
George Washington University - Qingzhao Zhang
University of Arizona - Xiaomin Lin
University of South Florida - Weisong Shi
University of Delaware - Christopher Stewart
The Ohio State University
Steering Committee
- Sabine Brunswicker
Purdue University - Kevin Butler
University of Florida - Liangkai Liu
Texas Tech University - Rahul Mangharam
University of Pennsylvania - Weisong Shi (Chair)
University of Delaware - Christopher Stewart
The Ohio State University
Workshop History
DroneSys 2025 was the first edition of the workshop series. It was co-located with ACM/IEEE SEC 2025 and held on December 6, 2025, featuring an invited talk by Christopher Stewart and four paper presentations. The first edition established the workshop identity at the intersection of edge computing and real-world drone autonomy.
Contact
For questions about the workshop, please contact the TPC chairs:
- Liangkai Liu — liangkai.liu@ttu.edu
- Christopher Stewart — cstewart@cse.ohio-state.edu