Engineering Technologies for the Design of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Uavs) for Various Industries of the Agricultural Sector, Civil Engineering and Logistics

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are currently one of the most promising areas of scientific and technological progress. Having appeared less than a century ago as a branch of the aircraft industry, the industry for the development and improvement of UAVs has become so in demand that it has become isolated and has been designated as a priority area of technological progress, due to many parameters, such as: small dimensions of UAVs, which ensures their compactness, versatility due to extensive scope for their use. The stereotype about the use of unmanned aerial vehicles only as high-tech toys with the ability to take photos and videos has long been dispelled, since nowadays, due to the development of the industry, the list of operations performed with the help of UAVs is constantly increasing, and the advantages of unmanned aerial vehicles as aircraft equipment play a significant role here: the possibility use at any distance, including remotely, which facilitates many tasks performed by people. Numerous studies in this area in scientific laboratories in the higher education system affect many areas of this industry: from improving performance, by increasing the capacity of batteries or using alternative methods of powering devices (using gasoline or kerosene internal combustion engines, hydrogen fuel, or rechargeable lithium-polymer/lithium-ion batteries in as fuel cells), research into aerodynamic parameters, improved controllability and maneuverability, increased speed performance and load capacity, as well as resistance to adverse weather conditions (strong winds, showers, thunderstorms), which are directly influenced by design solutions and materials used in the creation, which determine the weight and the size of the future drone. Various solutions in the design and appearance of an unmanned vehicle bring innovation, since it is possible to create both unmanned airplanes and helicopters with decent payload capacity, as well as maneuverable but compact multicopters (tri-, quad-, hexa- and octocopters). Developments in the field of software for unmanned aerial vehicles are also constantly improving due to increasing requirements: for the quality of the resulting images for information analysis, their navigation, and improving their object recognition mechanisms, presented through the integration of machine vision tools. The development of UAVs intended for civil use is one of the promising areas of engineering science, since the number of industries that need automation and the use of UAVs to perform certain tasks is growing every year. Civil industries currently represent a huge range of areas, from geological exploration and oil well research to logistics, agro-industry, electric power and forestry. The article will clearly show the evolution of unmanned aerial vehicles, list their advantages and disadvantages, and also indicate the directions of their use in a variety of civil-oriented industries and the prospects for their development.