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UAVs or Unmanned Arial Vehicles are becoming more and more prevalent in our day to day lives from military information to deliveries of medicine to film crews more and more fields utilise drone technology. In this paper I will be displaying the different fields of UAVs and how they can be best used.
First of all we need to understand what UAVs are. UAVs are defined as "An aircraft piloted by remote control or onboard computers"by oxford dictionaries. Essentially a UAV or drone (which is their more common name) is any vehicle that flies that does not posses manual controls. If a vehicle can be operated manually at all it is not a drone and instead posses an optional auto-pilot. If an arial vehicle carries passengers but no hardware to pilot it, it is counted as a drone. However most drones are small and do not carry passengers. Many people thinking of drones will immediately think of the classic quad-copter design:
But a UAV can appear as anything from a rocket to an airplane to a blimp.
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Drones typically fly by 3 modes, which allow for some choice in operations.
multi-rotors which have anywhere between 3 and 8 mounted turbines that can change direction in unison. multi-rotors are the most stable of most drones and use a gyroscope to make sure they are always level. multi-rotors are often used for taking pictures or videos due to their stability but are often fairly slow.
Single rotor drones actually have two rotors much like a helicopter, with one on the main body for lift and one at the tail for changing directions. Single rotor drones are often used because of their compact nature and ability to fly higher then multi-rotors.
Fixed wing drones are the most similer to air planes and usually have two wings and either a small jet engine or a turbine to propel it. Fixed wing drones are faster than all other drones can travel over longer distances and is more fuel efficient. But they require a landing strip and cannot hover. These drones are often used for large scale photography.
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Drones come in 4 different classifications of size, each with its own utility.
Nano drones measure only several centimetres wide, and are often used for moving in buildings or small area such as mines. Nano drones are often single rotor drones as their profile is more compact and slender then a multi-rotors.
Small drones are anywhere between a foot and 2 meters and make up the majority of personal drones. Usually multi-rotors or glider based fixed wing drones make up this category.
Medium drones are about 200kg and are smaller then light aircraft but require two people to lift, either turbine based fixed wing drones or very large multi-rotors and single rotor drones make up this category. These are often used for photographing large areas or making short distance deliveries.
Large drones are about the size of small aircrafts are are almost entirely made up by jet engine based fix winged drones. These drones move incredibly fast over long distances but are expensive to maintain and take up lots of space.
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Drones have several distances they can travel based on several things such as fuel consumption, speed and UAS (Unmmand Arial System used for controlling drones can be any form from a computer program to a hand held controller). The distances are categorised into 4 ranges.
Close range drones can fly for up to an hour and move as far as 5km away from the UAS. The usually encompasses racing drones, films drones and recreational drones (Usually multi-rotors and single rotors).
Short range drones can fly up to 150km away from their UAS and fly for about 12 hours. These drones are used for commercial purposes such as land photography, deliveries and farming.
Mid-range drones can sustain flight for days and travel up to 650km away from their UAS. usually these are used by scientists for prolonged large area research or military groups for long term sieges or espionage missions, however, they have been used commercially for transportation.
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The future of drones. As drones become more and more developed new, more complicated, things will be done with them. Already drones are being used for general agriculture but if a UAS was internal (without a human behind the controller) Large scale farms could be upheld with little need for man power, drones would simply have a set of responses. Drones could also be used as early warning systems. If a large storm or some general effect occurred that might damage cellular connection or information communication, internally UASed drones could be programmed to fly ahead of the disaster and broadcast a message over loud speakers. Drones are even developing forms of onboard energy production such as solar or wind to remain airborne indefinitely. The ability to quickly go where no man can go means that UAVs open up an avenue for innovation in the world for years to come.
If i missed something i would recommend checking out this website: http://grinddrone.com/features/different-types-of-drones
I collected almost all of my information and terms for this site with slight changes. It also has additional information on price ranges and very specific multi-rotor drones, such as racing drones and trick drones.