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Environmental Geoinformatics pp 265–289Cite as

Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles

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Part of the book series: Environmental Science and Engineering ((ENVSCIENCE))

Abstract

In recent decades, Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles (UAVs) became a popular household name that caught attention over the world. With its continued development, its advantages are increasingly outstanding whether for military or civilian use. Compared to the manned aircrafts, UAVs are cheap, efficient, convenient, reduce casualty rates in the modern war and achieve complex goals when combined with other equipments (e.g., sensors, scanners) in the civil fields. Therefore, many countries, especially the developed countries, are already engaged in the research and development of UAVs. This chapter systematically introduces UAVs from the perspective of terminology and definitions, historical background, basics of unmanned aerial systems, GNSS in supporting UAVs, Environment applications of UAVs, and finally discusses its future challenges.

A lots is happening lately on the subject of drone applications in agriculture and precision farming. From the ability to image, recreate and analyze individual leaves on a corn plant from 120 m height, to getting information on the water-holding capacity of soils to variable-rate water applications, agricultural practices are changing due to drones delivering agricultural intelligence for both farmers and agricultural consultants.

— Frank Veroustraete [1]

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Spatial Sciences, Curtin University, Perth, WA, Australia

    Joseph Awange

  2. Department of Geospatial and Space Technology, University of Nairobi , Nairobi, Kenya

    John Kiema

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Correspondence to Joseph Awange .

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Awange, J., Kiema, J. (2019). Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles. In: Environmental Geoinformatics. Environmental Science and Engineering(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03017-9_20

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