An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard. UAVs are often preferred for missions that are too "dull, dirty or dangerous" for manned aircraft.
UAVs can be utilised for a number of monitoring and control applications including;
- aerial surveying of crops, stockpiles or boundaries,
- inspecting power lines and pipelines,
- environmental monitoring,
- fire/flood detection and tracking,
- various surveillance applications,
- land surveying.