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UAVs: waiting in the wings? - Cover story
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18/04/2008
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The emergence of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) systems is being seen as one of the most dynamic growth sectors in the world of aviation. Whilst this is due largely to the enormous growth of interest from the defence sector towards tactical reconnaissance and information warfare, UAVs are also playing an increasingly pivotal role in a number of civilian applications, such as gathering scientific data and traffic/security surveillance missions.
The main justification for using UAV technology is in reducing the risk to human life whilst lowering operational costs and their success stems from the opportunity to perform high risk, dangerous and monotonous missions autonomously. Hence, UAVs are generally considered to offer twin benefits of survivability and expendability, as well as being potentially more cost effective than returned systems. Removing the pilot provides the UAV platform designer with additional freedom in terms of performance, size, payload and endurance constraints when compared with manned airplanes.
One of the most notably recent successes in the field of atmospheric research for bioscience projects comes from one of the harshest and most remote environments on Earth – Antarctica. Seen as a major breakthrough in gathering scientific data, scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), in collaboration with the Technical University of Braunschweig (TUB) and its spin out Mavionics, completed the first ever series of flights by two autonomous UAVs in Antarctica.
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Author
Mike Richardson
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