Abstract In recent years, coaxial dual-rotor aircraft has attracted much attention due to its unique aerodynamic layout. However, it is difficult to miniaturize the coaxial dual-rotor aircraft that relies on the principle of periodic pitch variation due to complex structure and control difficulties. This study proposes a small cylindrical coaxial dual-rotor aircraft based on a vector motor seat. For the control problems of such coaxial dual-rotor aircraft, a position and attitude controller based on neural networks and adaptive cascaded PID control is designed. A control system model was established and tested using MATLAB/Simulink. The proposed control scheme’s soundness and efficiency were confirmed by creating a prototype and performing flight trials. The results show that compared with the classic PID controller, the control effect of the controller has improved by 36.3% to 54.6%. In the centripetal rotation flight simulation experiment, the displacement error does not exceed 0.2 m, the speed error does not exceed 0.05 m/s, and the attitude angle error does not exceed 0.01 rad. This validates the effectiveness of the designed controller, indicating that the controller can enhance the stability of the system and achieve stable hovering and flight.