An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone and in some cases referred to as a Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA), is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard. There are different kinds of drones. A drone may be an unmanned air system (UAS), unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), remote piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) and model aircraft. Its flight is controlled either autonomously by onboard computers or by the remote control of a pilot on the ground or in another vehicle. The typical launch and recovery method of an unmanned aircraft is by the function of an automatic system or an external operator on the ground. Historically, UAVs have been simple remotely piloted aircraft, but autonomous control is increasingly being employed.
UAV's are typically deployed for military and special operation applications, but also used in a small but growing number of civil applications, such as policing and firefighting, and nonmilitary security work, such as inspection of power or pipelines.
During use, a UAV may need to take off and land at a designated location. Such designated locations may include landing locations.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) may need to land in order to perform routine maintenance, charge on-board energy storage devices, swap on-board energy storage devices, refuel, and/or data transfer. UAVs can operate without a human operator on board the UAV. UAVs can comprise a variety of on board sensors and control systems.