drone
In plain wordsAn aircraft that carries no one aboard to fly it: a person steers it from the ground, or its own software does. Small camera-carrying quadcopters are the most familiar kind.
A flying machine with nobody aboard to pilot it, controlled from the ground, by its own onboard software or by a mix of the two; by extension, a similar uncrewed vehicle on land, on the water or under it. Aviation regulators favor 'unmanned aircraft system' (UAS) or 'remotely piloted aircraft system', names that cover the whole setup, ground station and radio links included. Small multirotor drones (quadcopters) dominate civilian use, from search and rescue, deliveries and farming to mapping, infrastructure inspection, photography and light shows, while larger fixed-wing drones serve military reconnaissance and strike. Autonomy ranges from stabilized manual flight and GPS waypoint following to onboard perception, obstacle avoidance and target tracking using computer visioncomputer vision, n.: The part of AI that lets computers make sense of images and video: recognizing faces, reading signs, spotting tumors on scans or judging how far away a car is., visual-inertial odometryodometry, n.: Estimating how far and in which direction a robot or vehicle has moved by adding up its own motion, such as wheel turns or how camera images shift, like counting your steps. and learned controllers; a research drone trained with deep reinforcement learningdeep reinforcement learning, n.: Reinforcement learning in which a large neural network does the learning, letting an AI learn tasks such as video games or robot control directly from raw inputs like screen pixels or camera images. beat human champions at drone racing in 2023. Since 2022 the war in Ukraine has made cheap first-person-view (FPV) attack drones, long-range one-way attack drones and electronic warfare central to combat, and jamming has pushed militaries toward onboard terminal guidance, sharpening concern about autonomous targeting. Civil use is regulated by national and regional authorities, as under the US FAA's Part 107 rules (2016) and the EU's open, specific and certified categories (applicable from the end of 2020).
The inspection drone flies the power line on its own and flags corroded insulators.
Origin
'Drone', a male bee, was applied in the mid-1930s to radio-controlled target aircraft. After Admiral William Standley, the US chief of naval operations, saw Britain's de Havilland Queen Bee target plane demonstrated in 1935, Delmer Fahrney, who led the Navy's similar project, adopted the name, reportedly in homage; it was in use by late 1936. 'Unmanned aerial vehicle' became a formal military term later in the century, and 'unmanned aircraft system' was adopted by the US Department of Defense and the FAA in 2005.
Usage note
Some militaries and regulators avoid 'drone' because it suggests mindless or fully autonomous operation, whereas most drones are remotely piloted. Weapons that select and engage targets without human intervention are debated separately as lethal autonomous weapons systems.
Related
- mobile robotmobile robot, n.: A robot that travels around by itself — on wheels, tracks, legs, propellers or thrusters — such as a robot vacuum, warehouse cart, delivery robot or planetary rover.
- swarm roboticsswarm robotics, n.: Coordinating large groups of simple robots that follow local rules and talk only to their neighbors, so useful group behavior emerges without a central controller, as in ant colonies or bird flocks.
- autonomous vehicleautonomous vehicle, n.: A vehicle, usually a car, truck or shuttle, that can drive itself, sensing the road, deciding what to do and steering, braking and accelerating with no human driving.
- teleoperationteleoperation, n.: Controlling a robot or machine from a distance, with a person steering it in real time using a joystick, a matching 'puppet' arm, a VR headset or a screen.
- dual-usedual-use, adj.: Describes technology or knowledge that can be used both to help and to harm: the same AI that finds software bugs for defenders can find them for attackers.
- odometryodometry, n.: Estimating how far and in which direction a robot or vehicle has moved by adding up its own motion, such as wheel turns or how camera images shift, like counting your steps.
- computer visioncomputer vision, n.: The part of AI that lets computers make sense of images and video: recognizing faces, reading signs, spotting tumors on scans or judging how far away a car is.
Sources
- Kaufmann, E. et al. (2023). Champion-level drone racing using deep reinforcement learning. Nature 620, 982–987.
Mentioned in
lethal autonomous weapons systemlethal autonomous weapons system, n.: A weapon that, after a person sets it going, picks out and attacks targets — including people — on its own, with no human deciding each strike. Critics call them killer robots., physical AIphysical AI, n.: AI built to work in the physical world rather than on a screen: the intelligence inside robots, self-driving cars, drones and other machines that must sense real surroundings and move through them., robotrobot, n.: A machine that senses its surroundings, decides what to do and physically acts, moving itself or handling objects, with some independence from a human operator. Factory arms, robot vacuums and self-driving cars are all robots., international humanitarian lawinternational humanitarian law, n.: The rules of international law that limit how wars may be fought, protecting civilians, the wounded and prisoners. They apply to every weapon, including ones that use AI., mobile robotmobile robot, n.: A robot that travels around by itself — on wheels, tracks, legs, propellers or thrusters — such as a robot vacuum, warehouse cart, delivery robot or planetary rover., path planningpath planning, n.: Finding a route for a robot or vehicle from a start to a goal that avoids obstacles, usually the shortest or safest one, much as a navigation app finds a route on a map., swarm roboticsswarm robotics, n.: Coordinating large groups of simple robots that follow local rules and talk only to their neighbors, so useful group behavior emerges without a central controller, as in ant colonies or bird flocks.