In recent decades, aerial robots especially small UAVs and drones have witnessed tremendous improvements in terms of their structure, working methodology, flying features and navigation control. UAVs are highly utilized in a wide range of services such as photography, path planning, search and rescue, inspection of power lines and civil constructions, etc. This manuscript reports a wide overview and comprehensive survey of recent developments in commercially available UAV’s and gives a brief note on the progress and research covered in last 10 years. The research presents a roadmap to understand the successive development of advanced drones/ UAVs in terms of their geometric structure, flying mechanism, sensing and vision ability, aviation quality, path planning, intelligent behaviour and adoptability. A literature survey is conducted systematically on 254 retrieved articles published in the last 10 years and scaled down to 96 relevant articles. In these shortlisted articles, path planning, neural network, artificial intelligence, inspection, surveillance, tracking and identification, etc. are the most relevant methodologies or applications presented. The current research is concerned about the growth and impact of UAVs/drones in the society and also inspires the newbies to carry research in this field and propose new methods to select or equip the flying robot for a specific application in various fields. This article also assists researchers in understanding and evaluating their research work in the context of existing solutions. It also helps newcomers and pilots/practitioners to quickly gain an overview of the existing vast literature in the related fields.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.