Читать книгу Introduction to UAV Systems - Mohammad H. Sadraey - Страница 52

This chapter provides general classes and missions of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). It also describes a representative sample of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), including some of the earlier designs that had a large impact on current systems. The range of UAS sizes and types now runs from air vehicles (AVs) small enough to land on the palm of your hand to large lighter‐than‐air vehicles. This chapter mainly concentrates on those in the range from model¹ airplanes up to medium‐sized aircraft, as does the rest of this book, where “unmanned aerial systems” and “UAV Systems” are utilized interchangeably.

Much of the early development of UAS was driven by government and military requirements, and the bureaucracies that manage such programs have made repeated efforts to establish a standard terminology for describing various types of UAS in terms of the capabilities of the air vehicles. While the “standard” terminology constantly evolves and occasionally changes abruptly, some of it has come into general use in the UAV community and is briefly described.

Finally, the chapter also attempts to summarize the applications for which UAS have been or are being considered, which provides a context for the system requirements that drive the design tradeoffs that are the primary topic of this book.