The invention of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

The history of the unmanned spy system aircraft has been and is shrouded in secrecy. It is originated in the same era as manned aviation.

The first combat unmanned aerial vehicles was developed and patented by Charles Perley as early as 1863. Use in civil war, it was UAV bomber unit built of a hot air balloon that could carry a basket of explosives. The basket was released on a timeout basis.

In 1895 William A. Eddy developed a aerial kite that could take photographs of the ground.

In the United Kingdom, Professor Archibald Low experimented with television guidance and produced a radio controlled rocket. Archibald Low developed the first radio controlled aircraft with a successful test flight on March 21, 1917. It was a flying bomb designed to carry warhead.

In the United States, Dr. D. E Buck built a piston-engine biplane designated AT for aerial torpedo, while Charles Kettering of the Delco Company built a similar vehicle that he called the Bug. The Bug demonstrated impressive distance and altitude performance, having flown some test at 100 miles distance and 10,000 ft altitudes.

In 1909 the American inventor Elmer Sperry began designing gyroscopic devices to control the stability of aircraft in flight, these being ancestor to modern inertial navigation systems.

Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane was developed in 1916. The automatic control equipment was originally tested on a Cutis N-9 seaplane. On March 6, 1918, the Curtis prototype successfully launched unmanned, flew its 1000 yard course in stable flight and dived on its target at the intended time and place, recovered and landed and thus the world’s first true ‘drone’.

In the late 1950s. the technology existed to use pilotless vehicles for photo reconnaissance.

The term unmanned aerial vehicle or UAV came into general used in the early 1990s to describe robotic aircraft and replaced the term remotely piloted vehicle – RPV, which was used during the Vietnam War and afterward.
The invention of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles of UAV

UAVs or unmanned aerial vehicles have been used in combat operations since the mid 1900s.

The UAV military utility was generally considered small during the Cold War. By the early 1980s, this had started to change. The advent of enhanced satellites communication, miniaturized electronics and sophisticated sensors fostered renewed interest in the potential capabilities of UAVs.

The first tactical UAV was the US Army SD-1 later called the MQM-S7 Falconer, a derivative of the prolific family to Radiophone target drones in use since World War II.

An unmanned aerial vehicle also known as drone refers to a pilotless aircraft a flying machine without an on-board human pilot or passengers.

UAVs equipped with proper the sensors could locate objects then transmit their own and object absolute positions such as longitude, latitude and even altitude based on calculations.

In order for a UAV to know its position, a combination of an Inertial Navigation System and GPS (Global Positioning System) compute and update the vehicles position and velocity.

They also have sophisticated camera equipment and radar system.

There are some aerial missions and tasks that are not suitable for human pilots either because it is too dangerous like military operations or it takes a long time in the air like mapping tasks.

UAVs have been invented to carry out such mission critical tasks.

What makes an UAV intelligent is the ability to fly to its target under varying conditions.

Unmanned aerial vehicles would eliminate the possibility of losing a pilot if the air vehicle were shot down.

By 2030, military experts predict that UCAVs or unmanned combat air vehicles will dominated air warfare. This kind of UAVs will be able to carry twice the payload of a manned fighter such as the F-16, but will only one third as much to build and operate.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles of UAV