Unmanned aerial vehicle (nonfiction)

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) (or uncrewed aerial vehicle, commonly known as a drone) is an aircraft without a human pilot on board and a type of unmanned vehicle. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS); which include a UAV, a ground-based controller, and a system of communications between the two. The flight of UAVs may operate with various degrees of autonomy: either under remote control by a human operator or autonomously by onboard computers.

Compared to crewed aircraft, UAVs were originally used for missions too "dull, dirty or dangerous" for humans. While they originated mostly in military applications, their use is rapidly expanding to commercial, scientific, recreational, agricultural, and other applications, such as policing and surveillance, product deliveries, aerial photography, smuggling, and drone racing.

Civilian UAVs now vastly outnumber military UAVs, with estimates of over a million sold by 2015.

Fiction cross-reference

• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Mavic Pro data access (nonfiction)

External links:

• Unmanned aerial vehicle @ Wikipedia
• ArduPilot - an open source, unmanned vehicle autopilot software suite, capable of controlling UAV's and other automated devices @ Wikipedia
• ArduCopter - multicopter unmanned aerial vehicle version of the open-source ArduPilot autopilot platform. @ Wikipedia
• How to build a $200 smart drone with the Pi Zero - by Greg Nichols (February 15, 2016): "Sure, you could buy a drone from DJI. Or you could build and customize this one"