An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV ), commonly known as a drone , is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard. 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. [1]
Compared to manned aircraft, UAVs were originally used for missions too "dull, dirty or dangerous" [2] for humans. While they originated mostly in military applications, their use is rapidly expanding to commercial, scientific, recreational, agricultural, and other applications,[3] such as policing, peacekeeping, [4] and surveillance, product deliveries , aerial photography, agriculture, smuggling, [5] and drone racing. Civilian UAVs now vastly outnumber military UAVs, with estimates of over a million sold by 2015, so they can be seen as an early commercial application of Autonomous Things , to be followed by the autonomous car and home robots.