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Review
. 2023;16(1):109-137.
doi: 10.1007/s11370-022-00452-4. Epub 2023 Jan 16.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs): practical aspects, applications, open challenges, security issues, and future trends

Syed Agha Hassnain Mohsan  1 , Nawaf Qasem Hamood Othman  2 , Yanlong Li  1   3 , Mohammed H Alsharif  4 , Muhammad Asghar Khan  5
Affiliations
Review

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs): practical aspects, applications, open challenges, security issues, and future trends

Syed Agha Hassnain Mohsan et al. Intell Serv Robot. 2023.

Abstract

Recently, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones have emerged as a ubiquitous and integral part of our society. They appear in great diversity in a multiplicity of applications for economic, commercial, leisure, military and academic purposes. The drone industry has seen a sharp uptake in the last decade as a model to manufacture and deliver convergence, offering synergy by incorporating multiple technologies. It is due to technological trends and rapid advancements in control, miniaturization, and computerization, which culminate in secure, lightweight, robust, more-accessible and cost-efficient UAVs. UAVs support implicit particularities including access to disaster-stricken zones, swift mobility, airborne missions and payload features. Despite these appealing benefits, UAVs face limitations in operability due to several critical concerns in terms of flight autonomy, path planning, battery endurance, flight time and limited payload carrying capability, as intuitively it is not recommended to load heavy objects such as batteries. As a result, the primary goal of this research is to provide insights into the potentials of UAVs, as well as their characteristics and functionality issues. This study provides a comprehensive review of UAVs, types, swarms, classifications, charging methods and regulations. Moreover, application scenarios, potential challenges and security issues are also examined. Finally, future research directions are identified to further hone the research work. We believe these insights will serve as guidelines and motivations for relevant researchers.

Keywords: Applications; Batteries; Charging; Path planning; Swarms; UAVs.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interestThe authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Commercial, industrial and military applications of UAVs
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Organization of this paper
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Architecture of UAV system
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Fig. 4
a Fixed-wing, b fixed wing hybrid, c single rotor, and d multirotor UAV
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Fig. 5
Classification of swarms
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Fig. 6
Different examples of UAVs on altitude a LADP, b LALE, c MALE, and d HALE [51]
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Fig. 7
Classification of UAV docking stations [1]
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Fig. 8
Statistics of WPT and Drones market growth [68]
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Fig. 9
PV-powered hovering favors small aircraft [84]
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Fig. 10
Solar-powered drones a Google’s project, b Facebook’s project [92]
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Fig. 11
LPT system to charge multi-UAVs
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Fig. 12
UAV assistance on highway
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Inspection of power lines through UAV
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Fig. 14
Role of UAVs in COVID-19 pandemic
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Limitations of current stage of UAV usage
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GPS spoofing attack
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Fig. 17
Ground control station (GCS) attacks, motivated by Mansfield et al. [126]
Fig. 18
Fig. 18
AI/ML-based solutions for UAV communication
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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