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{{TOCright}}[[Image:Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.jpg|thumb|Pioneer UAV flying over [[Iraq]]]]
[[Image:RQ-7 CM2.jpg|thumb|UAVs in a hangar]]
[[Image:RQ-7 CM2.jpg|thumb|UAVs in a hangar]]
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[[Image:CID_practice.jpg|thumb|A [[Boeing 720]] being flown under remote control as part of [[NASA]]'s [[Controlled Impact Demonstration]]]]
An '''unmanned aerial vehicle''' ('''UAV''') is a pilotless aircraft, controlled either remotely or flown autonomously, used for a number of missions, including [[reconnaissance]] and attack roles. For the purposes of this article, and to distinguish UAVs from missiles, a UAV is defined as being capable of controlled, sustained level flight and powered by a jet or reciprocating engine. The acronym UAV has been expanded in some cases to '''UAVS''' ('''Unmanned Aircraft Vehicle System''') or '''UAS''' ('''Unmanned Aircraft System''') to reflect the fact that these complex systems include ground stations and other elements besides the actual air vehicles.
An '''unmanned aerial vehicle''' ('''UAV''') is a pilotless aircraft, controlled either remotely or flown autonomously, used for a number of missions, including [[reconnaissance]] and attack roles. For the purposes of this article, and to distinguish UAVs from missiles, a UAV is defined as being capable of controlled, sustained level flight and powered by a jet or reciprocating engine. The acronym UAV has been expanded in some cases to '''UAVS''' ('''Unmanned Aircraft Vehicle System''') or '''UAS''' ('''Unmanned Aircraft System''') to reflect the fact that these complex systems include ground stations and other elements besides the actual air vehicles.


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==UAV models==
==UAV models==
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[[Image:CID_practice.jpg|thumb|A [[Boeing 720]] being flown under remote control as part of [[NASA]]'s [[Controlled Impact Demonstration]]]]
With primary mission(s) and year of first flight.
With primary mission(s) and year of first flight.


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===Israeli models: ===
===Israeli models: ===
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[[Image:Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.jpg|thumb|Pioneer UAV flying over [[Iraq]]]]
*[[Top I Vision casper 250]]
*[[Top I Vision casper 250]]
*[[Top I Vision Aerostat]]
*[[Top I Vision Aerostat]]

Revision as of 00:53, 9 October 2006

File:RQ-7 CM2.jpg
UAVs in a hangar

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is a pilotless aircraft, controlled either remotely or flown autonomously, used for a number of missions, including reconnaissance and attack roles. For the purposes of this article, and to distinguish UAVs from missiles, a UAV is defined as being capable of controlled, sustained level flight and powered by a jet or reciprocating engine. The acronym UAV has been expanded in some cases to UAVS (Unmanned Aircraft Vehicle System) or UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System) to reflect the fact that these complex systems include ground stations and other elements besides the actual air vehicles.

Types

UAVs typically fall into one of four categories (although multi-role airframe platforms are becoming more prevalent):

  • Target and decoy - providing ground and aerial gunnery a target that simulates an enemy aircraft or missile
  • Reconnaisance - providing battlefield intelligence
  • Combat - providing attack capability for high-risk missions (see Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle)
  • Research and development - used to further develop UAV technologies to be integrated into field deployed UAV aircraft
  • Civil and Commercial UAVs - UAVs specifically designed for civil and commercial applications.

History

Main article: History of unmanned aerial vehicles

The earliest such aircraft, the Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane was developed during and after World War I, and a number of advances were made with the technology rush that accompanied the Second World War; these were used both to train anti-aircraft gunners and to fly attack missions. Nevertheless, they were little more than full-sized remote controlled airplanes until the Viet Nam era. Lately, with the maturing and miniturization of applicable technologies, interest in such craft has grown within the higher echelons of the US military, as they offer the possibility of cheaper, more capable fighting machines that can be used without risk to aircrews. Initial generations have primarily been surveillance aircraft, but some have already been fitted with weaponry (such as the RQ-1 Predator, which utilizes AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles). The military envisions that more and more roles will be performed by unmanned aircraft, initially bombing and ground attack, with air-to-air combat expected to be the last domain of the fighter pilot for now. A weaponized UAV is known as an Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle, or UCAV for short.

Degree of autonomy

Some early UAVs are called drones because they are no more sophisticated than a simple radio controlled aircraft being controlled by a human pilot (sometimes called the operator) at all times. More sophisticated versions may have built-in control and/or guidance systems to perform low level human pilot duties such as speed and flight path stabilization, and simple prescripted navigation functions such as waypoint following.

From this perspective, most early UAVs are not autonomous at all. In fact, the field of air vehicle autonomy is a recently emerging field, whose economics is largely driven by the military to develop battle ready technology for the warfighter. Compared to the manufacturing of UAV flight hardware, the market for autonomy technology is fairly immature and undeveloped. Because of this, autonomy has been and may continue to be the bottleneck for future UAV developments, and the overall value and rate of expansion of the future UAV market could be largely driven by advances to be made in the field of autonomy.

Autonomy technology that will become important to future UAV development fall under the following categories:

  • Sensor fusion: Combining information from different sensors for use on board the vehicle
  • Communications: Handling communication and coordination between multiple agents in the presence of incomplete and imperfect information
  • Motion planning (also called Path planning): Determining an optimal path for vehicle to go while meeting certain objectives and constraints, such as obstacles
  • Trajectory Generation: Determining an optimal control maneuver to take to follow a given path or to go from one location to another
  • Task Allocation and Scheduling: Determining the optimal distribution of tasks amongst a group of agents, with time and equipment constraints
  • Cooperative Tactics: Formulating an optimal sequence and spatial distribution of activities between agents in order to maximize chance of success in any given mission scenario

Autonomy is commonly defined as the ability to make decisions without human intervention. To that end, the goal of autonomy is to teach machines to be "smart" and act more like humans. The keen observer may associate this with the development in the field of artificial intelligence made popular in the 1980s and 1990s such as expert systems, neural networks, machine learning, natural language processing, and vision. However, the mode of technological development in the field of autonomy has mostly followed a bottom-up approach, and recent advances have been largely driven by the practitioners in the field of control science, not computer science. Similarly, autonomy has been and probably will continue to be considered an extension of the controls field. In the foreseeable future, however, the two fields will merge to a much greater degree, and practitioners and researchers from both disciplines will work together to spawn rapid technological development in the area.

To some extent, the ultimate goal in the development of autonomy technology is to replace the human pilot. It remains to be seen whether future developments of autonomy technology, the perception of the technology, and most importantly, the political climate surrounding the use of such technology, will limit the development and utility of autonomy for UAV applications.

Under the NATO standardization policy 4586 all NATO UAVs will have to be flown using the Tactical Control System (TCS) a system developed by the software company Raytheon.

UAV models

A Boeing 720 being flown under remote control as part of NASA's Controlled Impact Demonstration

With primary mission(s) and year of first flight.

Argentine models:

Chinese (PRC) models:

European models:

French models:

German models:

Greek models

Hezbollah models

  • Mirsad-1, reconnaissance, possible weapon (2004)

Indian models:

Israeli models:

Pioneer UAV flying over Iraq

Iranian models:

Italian models:

Japanese models

Jordanian models:

Pakistani models:

South African models:

Soviet models

Swiss models:

Swedish models:

Turkish models:

  • TAI TIHA (MALE)(due 2008)
  • [TAI Turna (Target drone) 1996] [2]
  • TAI Keklik (Target drone) 1996
  • TAI UAV-X1 "Witness" (Tactical) 1992
  • TAI Pelikan (Tactical) 2000
  • TAI Baykus (Tactical) 2000
  • TAI Martı (Mini) 2000
  • METU Guventurk (Mini)
  • Baykar Heli İha
  • Bayraktar Mini UAV

United Kingdom models:

United States military models:

United States non-military models

Privately developed

Commercial interest in non-military UAVs has led to several startups that are designing and selling autonomous aircraft. These include:

Open Source UAV Projects

Trivia

  • UAVs have been used in many episodes of the science fiction television series Stargate SG-1.
  • Another fictional example of a UAV is a Hunter-Killer Aerial seen in the future war sequences in the Terminator series
  • UAVs have been featured in the Metal Gear Solid series as military units used for surveilance, taking the name "cypher."
  • UAVs are featured in the Battlefield 2 and Battlefield Modern Combat video games, and reveal the whereabouts of all infantry and vehicles within it's radius on the radar.
  • UAVs are featured in the xbox 360 and PC title Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter.
  • Marilyn Monroe, then named Norma Jeane, was discovered while working in the factory building the first mass-produced UAVs, the OQ-2 Radioplane.

See also


Video

Wikimedia Commons has media related to UAV.
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