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Unmanned aerial vehicle

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew, or passengers on board. UAVs were originally developed through the twentieth century for military missions too "dull, dirty or dangerous"[1] for humans, and by the twenty-first, they had become essential assets to most militaries. As control technologies improved and costs fell, their use expanded to many non-military applications.[2] These include aerial photography, area coverage,[3] precision agriculture, forest fire monitoring,[4] river monitoring,[5][6] environmental monitoring,[7][8][9][10] policing and surveillance, infrastructure inspections, smuggling,[11] product deliveries, entertainment, and drone racing.

"UAV" redirects here. For other uses, see UAV (disambiguation).

Terminology[edit]

Many terms are used for aircraft which fly without any persons on board.


The term drone has been used from the early days of aviation, some being applied to remotely flown target aircraft used for practice firing of a battleship's guns, such as the 1920s Fairey Queen and 1930s de Havilland Queen Bee. Later examples included the Airspeed Queen Wasp and Miles Queen Martinet, before ultimate replacement by the GAF Jindivik.[12] The term remains in common use. In addition to the software, autonomous drones also employ a host of advanced technologies that allow them to carry out their missions without human intervention, such as cloud computing, computer vision, artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, and thermal sensors.[13] For recreational uses, an aerial photography drone is an aircraft that has first-person video, autonomous capabilities, or both.[14]


An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is defined as a "powered, aerial vehicle that does not carry a human operator, uses aerodynamic forces to provide vehicle lift, can fly autonomously or be piloted remotely, can be expendable or recoverable, and can carry a lethal or nonlethal payload".[15] UAV is a term that is commonly applied to military use cases.[16] Missiles with warheads are generally not considered UAVs because the vehicle itself is a munition, but certain types of propeller-based missile are often called "kamikaze drones" by the public and media. Also, the relation of UAVs to remote controlled model aircraft is unclear, UAVs may or may not include remote-controlled model aircraft. Some jurisdictions base their definition on size or weight; however, the US FAA defines any unmanned flying craft as a UAV regardless of size. A similar term is remotely piloted aerial vehicle (RPAV).


UAVs or RPAVs can also be seen as a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which also includes a ground-based controller and a system of communications with the aircraft.[4] The term UAS was adopted by the United States Department of Defense (DoD) and the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 2005 according to their Unmanned Aircraft System Roadmap 2005–2030.[17] The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the British Civil Aviation Authority adopted this term, also used in the European Union's Single European Sky (SES) Air Traffic Management (ATM) Research (SESAR Joint Undertaking) roadmap for 2020.[18] This term emphasizes the importance of elements other than the aircraft. It includes elements such as ground control stations, data links and other support equipment. Similar terms are unmanned aircraft vehicle system (UAVS) and remotely piloted aircraft system (RPAS).[19] Many similar terms are in use. Under new regulations which came into effect 1 June 2019, the term RPAS has been adopted by the Canadian Government to mean "a set of configurable elements consisting of a remotely piloted aircraft, its control station, the command and control links and any other system elements required during flight operation".[20]

Hand-held 2,000 ft (600 m) altitude, about 2 km range

Close 5,000 ft (1,500 m) altitude, up to 10 km range

NATO type 10,000 ft (3,000 m) altitude, up to 50 km range

Tactical 18,000 ft (5,500 m) altitude, about 160 km range

up to 30,000 ft (9,000 m) and range over 200 km

MALE (medium altitude, long endurance)

over 30,000 ft (9,100 m) and indefinite range

HALE (high altitude, long endurance)

Hypersonic high-speed, supersonic (Mach 1–5) or hypersonic (Mach 5+) 50,000 ft (15,200 m) or suborbital altitude, range over 200 km

Orbital low Earth orbit (Mach 25+)

CIS Lunar Earth-Moon transfer

Computer Assisted Carrier Guidance System (CACGS) for UAVs

 – This type provides a positive control signal (faster, slower, left, right, up, down) without incorporating feedback from sensor data.

Open loop

 – This type incorporates sensor feedback to adjust behavior (reduce speed to reflect tailwind, move to altitude 300 feet). The PID controller is common. Sometimes, feedforward is employed, transferring the need to close the loop further.[88]

Closed loop

Performance considerations[edit]

Flight envelope[edit]

UAVs can be programmed to perform aggressive maneuvers or landing/perching on inclined surfaces,[96] and then to climb toward better communication spots.[97] Some UAVs can control flight with varying flight modelisation,[98][99] such as VTOL designs.


UAVs can also implement perching on a flat vertical surface.[100]

Topographic surveys for the production of orthomosaics, digital surface models and 3D models;

[160]

Monitoring of natural ecosystems for biodiversity monitoring, habitat mapping,[162] detection of invasive alien species[163] and study of ecosystem degradation due to invasive species or disturbances;

[161]

Precision agriculture which exploits all available technologies including UAV in order to produce more with less (e.g., optimisation of fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation);

[164]

River monitoring several methods have been developed to perform flow monitoring using image velocimetry methods which allow to properly describe the 2D flow velocity fields.

[165]

Structural integrity of any type of structure whether it be a dam, railway or other dangerous, inaccessible or massive locations for building monitoring.

[166]

Axe, David. Drone War Vietnam. Pen & Sword, Military. Great Britain. (2021). ISBN 978 1 52677 026 4

Sayler, Kelley (June 2015). (PDF). Center for a New American Security. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 March 2016.

"A world of proliferated drones: a technology primer"

Wagner, William (1982), Lightning Bugs and other Reconnaissance Drones; The can-do story of Ryan's unmanned spy planes, Armed Forces Journal International : Aero Publishers,  978-0-8168-6654-0

ISBN

Cahill, Bill (April 2022). "Lightning Bugs & Buffalo Hunters: The Ryan Model 147 Drone in Vietnam". The Aviation Historian (39): 18–27.  2051-1930.

ISSN

Hill, J., & Rogers, A. (2014). . Vancouver Island University Arts & Humanities Colloquium Series.

The rise of the drones: From The Great War to Gaza

Javier Garcia-Bernardoa; Peter Sheridan Dodds; Neil F. Johnson (2016). (PDF). Science direct. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 February 2016.

"Quantitative patterns in drone wars"

Rogers, A., & Hill, J. (2014). Unmanned: Drone warfare and global security. Between the Lines.  9781771131544

ISBN

Archived 2 May 2018 at the Wayback Machine, Rolling Stone Magazine

How Intelligent Drones Are Shaping the Future of Warfare