Unmanned aerial vehicle

"UAV" redirects here. For other uses, see UAV (disambiguation).

"RPAS" redirects here; not to be confused with Rorschach Performance Assessment System.

"Unmanned drone" redirects here. Not to be confused with the sculpture of the same name.

A General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper, an unmanned combat aerial vehicle used for both intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance (ISTAR) and drone strike missions.

Ingenuity is an extraterrestrial autonomous UAV that performed the first powered controlled flight by an aircraft on another planet.

DJI Phantom, a small civilian quadcopter designed for commercial and recreational aerial photography. This type of craft is also used or adapted for surveillance by law enforcement and military organisations.

DJI Mini, a consumer-grade drone used for recreational flying

Although most large military UAVs are fixed-wing aircraft, rotorcraft designs (i.e., RUAVs) such as this Schiebel Camcopter S-100 are also used.

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or unmanned aircraft system (UAS), commonly known as an aerial drone or simply drone, is an aircraft with no human pilot, crew, or passengers on board, which instead is either autonomous or controlled remotely. UAVs were originally developed through the twentieth century for military missions too "dull, dirty or dangerous" for humans, and by the twenty-first had become essential assets to most militaries. As control technologies improved and costs fell, their use expanded to many non-military applications. These include aerial photography, area coverage, precision agriculture, forest fire monitoring, river monitoring, environmental monitoring, weather observation, policing and surveillance, infrastructure inspections, smuggling, product deliveries, entertainment, and drone racing.