Richard Spilsbury - Drones

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Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Spilsbury, Louise.

Title: Drones / Louise and Richard Spilsbury.

Description: New York : Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2017. | Series: Cutting-edge technology | Includes index.

Identifiers: ISBN 9781482451627 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781482451566 (library bound) | ISBN 9781482451443 (6 pack)

Subjects: LCSH: Drone aircraft--Juvenile literature.

Classification: LCC UG1242.D7 S65 2017 | DDC 623.7469--dc23

First Edition

Published in 2017 by

Gareth Stevens Publishing

111 East 14th Street, Suite 349

New York, NY 10003

2017 Gareth Stevens Publishing

Produced for Gareth Stevens by Calcium

Editors: Sarah Eason and Harriet McGregor

Designer: Simon Borrough

Picture researcher: Rachel Blount

Picture credits: Cover: Getty Images: PHILIPPE HUGUEN (photo), Shutterstock: Eky Studio (banner), Shutterstock: R-studio (back cover bkgrd); Inside: AeroVironment, Inc.: 6, 19; senseFly Ltd: 41; Shutterstock: Avarand 39, Boscorelli 25, ChameleonsEye 36, Steve Collender 35, Maria Dryfhout 11, Igor.stevanovic 17, Istanbul_image_video 12, Ivan_Sabo 33, Jbor 44, Alexander Kolomietz 5, Lucky Business 9, Marekuliasz 28, Slavoljub Pantelic 43; Wikimedia Commons: Cargyrak (CC BY-SA 4.0) 1, Erik Hildebrandt 27, Jrfreeland 21, Jessica Lea/DFID (CC BY 2.0) 33, U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Christopher Matthews 22, U.S. Air Force photo by Bobbi Zapka 15.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without permission from the publisher, except by reviewer.

Printed in the United States of America

CPSIA compliance information: Batch #CS16GS: For further information contact Gareth Stevens, New York, New York at 1-800-542-2595.

H ave you ever looked up to watch birds, insects, helicopters, or airplanes moving through the air? Imagine if the skies of the future were filled with flying objects that were neither living nor had pilots inside. This idea is not far from reality. Aerial robots called drones exist, are used in many industries, and are here to stay!

A drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). It has its own power source and can either fly alone or can be operated by a pilot on the ground by remote control. A drone can carry objects ranging from cameras to weapons. So far a drone sounds a little like a radio-controlled airplane. But the big difference is that drones have computers on board that enable them to automatically adjust and correct how they fly. The ability to do things on their own requires computer programming. Drones are partly autonomous robots.

There is a huge variety of different drones in use worldwide today. Some of us might think that drones are entirely used in the military for keeping watch on an enemy or for dropping bombs on them. However, drones are used for many other equally important tasks. They monitor populations of endangered animals or the health of crops. They spot forest fires or monitor crowds of protestors to keep them safe. Drones are used to search for survivors of accidents, to help make maps, and to shoot movies. They are also great toys!

Drones are flying robots that are operated from the ground by radio control, but also by inbuilt computers that help them control their own flight.

I n the early twentieth century, inventors dreamed of unmanned airplanes fighting battles. However, UAVs remained a dream until the late 1950s.

The U.S. Air Force began to develop UAVs in the Vietnam War to help reduce the loss of human lives during battles and to avoid pilots being caught by the enemy. These vehicles were based on the Firebee target drones that had been used since the early 1950s. These were small, unmanned airplanes with powerful engines. They often launched from under the wings of large airplanes. The newer Firefly UAVs had bigger wings and tails, and more powerful engines so they could fly faster and farther. They could get above enemy territory and take photographs of the opposition.

The small drones of the present developed partly from big military drones used in the Vietnam War.

The cameras on the Fireflies parachuted to Earth for soldiers to collect the photographs, but many cameras were lost. By the 1970s, the Israeli Air Force had developed drones with video cameras that could transmit images to troops on the ground. The drones could fly low, like airplanes, so enemy missiles targeted them rather than manned airplanes. In the 1990s, sophisticated U.S. UAVs such as the Predator drone entered combat in the Gulf War. These modern drones could navigate themselves and fire missiles of their own. Since then, UAVs have been used in conflicts worldwide. Advancements in drone technology made by the military have been used to create stable, unmanned flying machines used for a wide variety of nonmilitary applications.

T odays drones are a regular part of a lot of air forces and standard equipment for many industries. However, they are still relatively new to the skies and people are debating their pros and cons.

Cost: It is much less expensive to buy a drone to do a task, such as taking photographs of an area, than hiring a helicopter and crew to do it for you. A drone may cost $1,000 to buy and a little more to train its users, but the equivalent helicopter service might cost $1,000 per hour!

Safety: Flying a drone from the ground is much safer than piloting an airplane, especially for military use.

Speed and maneuverability: Many drones cannot fly as fast as airplanes but it is often much quicker to deploy them, or move them into position, ready for action, than it is to deploy an airplane. This is partly because they are generally smaller, easy to transport, and do not need to launch and land at designated airports. Drones can also fly closer to objects than helicopters and move around them more easily.