2.2. Advent
The invention of UAVs and the advances in this technology were largely driven by military requirements and progressive means of warfare duringWorld War I. The advent of UAVs dates back to 1916 when Dr. Archibald Montgomery Low and his two colleagues started a military project in Britain called “Aerial Target”, or AT, to develop a UAV filled with explosives. As a parallel development by the US Navy, a project named “Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane” (named after the inventors Elmer Sperry and Peter Hewitt) was also undertaken in 1916 during World War I to develop an explosive laden UAV. “Kettering Bug” also followed in 1918 as another US-made military UAV. Since then, UAVs with gradually increasing reconnaissance capabilities have been an essential part of top armies across the globe. The first accounts of civilian applications of UAV were given by Przybilla and Wester-
Ebbinghaus (1979) and Wester-Ebbinghaus (1980), when they conducted test flights using cameras on fixed wings and onmodel helicopters, respectively. These researchers were pioneers in realising the
mapping prowess of UAV, but the idea of fully utilising this technology for research purposes did not receive much attention until the last decade. Credit for this advance goes to the tremendous progress in computing (both hardware and software) and imaging technologies. Many private ventures have invested in this technology, and the number of firms providing UAVs and mapping solutions is rapidly increasing.