page_title: Unmanned aerial vehicle
section_title: Safety and security
hierarchical_section_title: Unmanned aerial vehicle / Safety and security
caption_attribution_description: English: US Department of Agriculture poster warning about the risks of flying drones near wildfires
context_page_description: An unmanned aerial vehicle is an aircraft without a human pilot on board and a type of unmanned vehicle. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system; which include a UAV, a ground-based controller, and a system of communications between the two. The flight of UAVs may operate with various degrees of autonomy: either under remote control by a human operator, autonomously by onboard computers or piloted by an autonomous robot.
  Compared to crewed aircraft, UAVs were originally used for missions too "dull, dirty or dangerous" for humans. While they originated mostly in military applications, their use is rapidly expanding to commercial, scientific, recreational, agricultural, and other applications, such as policing and surveillance, product deliveries, aerial photography, infrastructure inspections, smuggling, and drone racing. Civilian UAVs now vastly outnumber military UAVs, with estimates of over a million sold by 2015.
caption: US Department of Agriculture poster warning about the risks of flying UAVs near wildfires
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