Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)
An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew, or passengers on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which includes adding a ground-based controller and a system of communications with the UAV.
The flight of UAVs may operate under remote control by a human operator, as remotely-piloted aircraft (RPA), or with various degrees of autonomy, such as autopilot assistance, up to fully autonomous aircraft with no provision for human intervention.
UAVs were initially developed through the twentieth century for military missions too, 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. These include forest fire monitoring, aerial photography, product deliveries, agriculture, policing and surveillance, infrastructure inspections, entertainment, science, smuggling, and drone racing[Hu, Lanzon, p. 170].
UAVs are descended from target drones and remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs) employed by the military forces of many countries in the decades immediately after World War II. Modern UAVs debuted as a crucial weapons system in the early 1980s, when the Israeli Defense Forces fitted small drones resembling large model airplanes with trainable television and infrared cameras and with target designators for laser-guided munitions downlinked to a control station [Guilmartin, Unmanned aerial vehicle].
Hu, J.; Lanzon, A. (2018). An innovative tri-rotor drone and associated distributed aerial drone swarm control. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 103, 162–174.Manchester:School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Manchester.
Guilmartin, J. F. (2022, August 31). Unmanned aerial vehicle. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from: https://www.britannica.com/technology/unmanned-aerial-vehicle