An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is an aircraft with no onboard pilot. UAVs can be remote controlled (RPV) or fly autonomously based on pre-programmed flight plans or more complex dynamic automated systems. UAV's are currently used in a number of military roles, including reconnaissance and attack. The primary effort at Aerovate is to create innovative aerial solutions that focus on civilian objectives such as geo-physical exploration and surveilance. The acronym UAV has been expanded in some cases to UAVS (Unmanned Aircraft Vehicle System). The Federal Aviation Administration has adopted the generic class Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) to reflect the fact that these are not just aircraft, but systems including ground stations and other elements. 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. Cruise missiles are not classed as UAVs, because, like many other guided missiles, the vehicle itself is a weapon that is not reused even though it is also unmanned and might in some cases be remotely guided.

Endurance

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 (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 pre-scripted 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. 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