Facts about Drones

12 Fun Facts about Drones

1. A drone, also known as an unmanned aerial vehicle, (UAV) is an aircraft without a pilot on board.
2. Its flight is usually controlled in two ways; either autonomously by computers in the vehicle (auto pilot) or under the remote control of a pilot on the ground.
3. A. M. Low’s “Aerial Target” in 1916 was one of the earliest attempt at a powered unmanned aerial vehicle.
4. There are two types of unmanned vehicles used by the US military at large in Afghanistan and other places, known as Predators and Global Hawks. Highly skilled aviator pilots fly them. Thanks to a combination of technology advances, a pilot no longer needs to be physically sitting in the airplane.
5. A first-person view (FPV) aircraft has a front-facing video camera and transmits real-time video to an operator on the ground. The pilot flies the plane by looking at images on a computer screen transmitted by the camera, giving him or her the feel of sitting in the cockpit.
6. The UAVs are unmanned aircraft guided exclusively by GPS or on-board computer analysis of imagery, but they aren’t first-person view UAVs.
7. Aerial surveillance of large areas is now made possible with low cost UAVs for livestock monitoring, wildfire mapping, pipeline/home security, road patrol and anti-piracy.
8. UAVs can be used to perform geophysical and geomagnetic surveys.
9. MQ1 Predator UAVs armed with Hellfire missiles are now majorly used by US for hitting their ground targets.
10. Armed Predators were first used in late 2001 from bases in Pakistan and Uzbekistan, to assassinate high profile targets inside Afghanistan.
11. 4756 people have killed been by US UAVs as per the report of senator Lidsey Graham, in February 2013.
12. Currently, engineers are working to produce UAVs that are capable of air to air combat, aerial refueling, combat search and rescue with facial recognition and resupply to agents on the ground.

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