Rate My Professor Ewoud Smeur

Ewoud J. J. Smeur is an Assistant Professor at the Micro Air Vehicle Laboratory (MAVLab) in the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology. His primary research focuses on advanced control strategies for micro air vehicles (MAVs) and hybrid unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), including attitude stabilization, guidance, navigation, wind disturbance rejection, and swarm cooperation for distributed measurements. Smeur specializes in Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (INDI) methods, applied to challenging flight regimes such as vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) tailsitters, variable skew quadplanes, and fault-tolerant systems. He leads efforts in wind speed estimation using novel sensors like microphones and propellers, as well as decentralized behaviors for hybrid UAV swarms acquiring data over large areas.

Smeur earned his PhD from Delft University of Technology in 2018, with his dissertation titled 'Incremental Control of Hybrid Micro Air Vehicles.' Prior to his current role, which began in April 2020, he contributed as a PhD candidate at MAVLab. His career emphasizes practical implementation in experimental platforms, including the DelftaCopter VTOL tailsitter UAV and the Cyclone hybrid UAV. Key publications include 'Adaptive Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion for Attitude Control of Micro Air Vehicles' (2018), cited extensively for its robust control under shear and turbulence; 'Cascaded Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion Control for MAV Disturbance Rejection' (2018); 'Design, control, and visual navigation of the DelftaCopter VTOL tail-sitter UAV' (2018); 'The NederDrone: A hybrid lift, hybrid energy hydrogen UAV' (2021); 'Airspeed estimation for UAVs using only propeller feedback' (2025); and 'Actuator nonlinear dynamic inversion for the variable skew quad plane with heterogeneous motor dynamics' (2026). These works have amassed over 1,100 citations, influencing advancements in autonomous aerospace robotics. Smeur has served on the organizing committee for the International Micro Air Vehicle Conference and Competition (IMAV) 2022 and supports MAVLab's competition successes, such as wins at IMAV 2024.