Today I found "Trying to make WiFlier, a Wifi enabled Quadcopter" youtube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n76iMTHXuE&feature=youtu.be
It makes use of ESP8266, and experienced the ESP8266 reset issues from noisy environment I had experienced as well. One interesting remark in that video was that Wifi connection to the ESP8266 is better when going through an external access point instead of making the ESP8266 the AP (which I did).
Hermann.