With the development of technology, we are facing high difficulty, high risk, and high content tasks that humans cannot handle. Drones have emerged as the times require. It replaces manned aircraft to carry out these tasks. Drones are devices controlled by radio, so some people call them remote-controlled aircraft. It can perfectly utilize cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, signal processing, and autonomous driving. Due to its advantages such as small size, unmanned driving, and long range, it is widely used in natural environment investigation, science popularization research, agriculture, safeguarding national sovereignty, public health and safety, and many other aspects. At present, this diverse application has accelerated the pace of exploration and development in various countries.

Prospects for drone development

1 Miniaturization

The application range of drones is becoming increasingly widespread, with small size, small volume, light weight, large functional area, and easy portability and control. It can be used as a monitor, tracker, and has biomimetic characteristics. To achieve this, it is not only necessary to miniaturize some basic equipment to ensure long-term battery life, but also to have a certain foundation in biotechnology. If drones could be as big and complete as ants, I believe that in the future, ants tripping elephants would no longer be a joke.

2 Invisibility

Stealth technology is a technology that reduces the signal characteristics of drones, making them difficult to identify, detect, track, and destroy. Like a chameleon, it can adapt to changes in its environment. The signal characteristic of drones is electromagnetic wave infrared [3]. In order to be invisible, (1) it is necessary to minimize the reflection of electromagnetic waves and the accumulation of heat, (2) it is necessary to reduce the infrared radiation of the engine as a nozzle and exhaust port, (3) fuel containing variable wavelength additives is used or the structure of the engine is changed, which accelerates the loss of heat.

3 Intelligence

As the name suggests, the intelligence of drones refers to the ability of drones to autonomously locate targets for attack, detection, or evasion based on the programs stored in the core. After the intelligence of drones, they can reduce the risk of being shot down, improve survival ability, improve recycling efficiency, increase combat effectiveness, reduce production costs, and save money for more developed areas. If unmanned aerial vehicles are intelligently applied to the military, it will bring about a huge turnover in the field of military applications, making them a weapon of war and fully leveraging their advantages.

4 Systematization

The current state of the drone requires targeted and fixed point operation by humans. After systematization, the coordination and cooperation ability between drones will be greatly improved, presenting a large-scale application mode based on clusters, rather than being labor-saving. Under a unified system, the cooperation and collaboration between drones will seamlessly connect, with clear division of labor, and achieve intelligent application modes of batch, focus, and intensity.

5 High speed and long-distance time

(1) A significant increase in flight speed will greatly enhance its maneuverability, thereby improving its survival rate. It can escape pursuit and radar encirclement faster, which will increase its coordination ability with some manned aircraft. 2) In order to achieve the long endurance of unmanned aerial vehicles, their fuel system needs to be improved accordingly. Efficient fuel cells can be developed, or new energy sources such as solar energy can be used to replace existing energy sources. High speed and long endurance drones will provide a material foundation for drones to serve as multi-mission combat platforms, significantly improving their reconnaissance capabilities, moving closer to powerful countries, advancing together to achieve globalization, and better filling gaps.

Some standard UAV appliance in daily life:

Agriculture and animal husbandry are difficult livelihood industries with low incomes and hardships. Drones can cross complex and muddy roads, search for signs of disease from the air, inspect crops, and even sow and fertilize. The use of drones can enable farmers to better manage land, save costs, and improve overall efficiency.

Driven by policies and other factors, the development prospects of agricultural and forestry plant protection drones are promising. After 2014, some local governments and relevant central departments successively introduced subsidy policies for the purchase of plant protection drones, which gave birth to a large number of plant protection drone enterprises. It is predicted that by 2025, the scale of China's agricultural plant protection service market will reach approximately 24.2 billion yuan. The future demand for unmanned aerial vehicles in China is bound to witness tremendous development.

Nowadays, drones are widely used in the field of transmission line inspection, becoming a good helper for line inspection. In 2019, the scale of China's drone power inspection market has reached nearly 3 billion yuan, and the development is very promising. In the future, with the accelerated implementation of new infrastructure and the further popularization of 5G networks and artificial intelligence, industry insiders are also quite optimistic about the future of power inspection drones.

China has 9.6 million square kilometers of land, which is very vast, which has also given rise to the problems of high difficulty and cost in surveying and mapping. In addition, the diverse terrain, complex environment, and ever-changing climate have also brought various limitations and difficulties to traditional surveying and mapping, which hinder the normal and effective implementation of surveying and mapping work. The landing of drones has brought good news to land surveying and mapping.

The value of drone aerial photography is enormous because it gives us the 'Eye of God'.

Aerial photography drones are a very popular application field among civilian consumer grade drones. Among the mainstream drone manufacturers in China, 42.8% are drone manufacturers engaged in professional aerial photography. In the trend of "Internet Plus", small drones can shoot/record film and television materials from high altitude, including extreme sports aerial photography, landscape aerial photography, and commercial promotional videos, by equipped with high-definition cameras.

In recent years, the development of the drone industry has been continuously accelerating, and the application scenarios have been continuously expanding. From civilian to police use, the application potential of drones in the field of police is increasingly being explored, and they are playing an increasingly important role in anti-terrorism reconnaissance, search and rescue, patrol monitoring, riot prevention, drug inspection, traffic management, and other fields.

After a disaster occurs, the authorities need to conduct a timely disaster level assessment in order to know how many people are affected and the degree of chaos, and develop rescue plans. Equipped with video and infrared cameras, drones can perform effective search and rescue tasks. They can fly over a wide area and find missing people in precise search mode.

Many countries around the world have applied drones in various disaster scenes, such as heat source monitoring in fire alarm scenes, and can also timely hang life-saving equipment to improve technological disaster relief capabilities. In disaster management, drones can also be used to obtain real-time information. Provide judgment to disaster relief personnel and make correct rescue actions.

In recent years, one of the important landing scenarios of artificial intelligence has been the accelerated development of intelligent logistics systems, and drone cargo transportation is no longer a new thing. The development of the COVID-19 in 2020 is speeding up this process. This year, Google drones were used, and the business volume doubled. The pace of life is constantly accelerating, and people's requirements for the efficiency of logistics delivery are becoming higher and higher. In the future, bottlenecks in technology, costs, policies, and other aspects will gradually be broken, and the delivery time of drones will become closer and closer.

Drones are a great auxiliary tool, and what we can do with them depends on our imagination and creativity. With the continuous pursuit of quality of life, the application of drones will become increasingly widespread.