UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES (UAVs) AND DRONE TECHNOLOGY

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have moved, within the span of a single professional career, from a specialized military niche to one of the most rapidly diversifying branches of aerospace engineering. A student entering this field today must understand not only classical flight mechanics but also brushless motor control, GNSS-denied navigation, machine-learning-based perception, spectrum-constrained radio communication, and a regulatory landscape that continues to be rewritten year by year. This breadth is precisely what makes UAV technology exciting to teach and difficult to write about comprehensively - and it is the gap this book attempts to close. This textbook is written for senior undergraduate and graduate students in aerospace, mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering, as well as for practicing engineers, researchers, and technically-minded regulators and policy analysts who need a rigorous but accessible single-volume reference spanning the full UAV technology stack - from airframe aerodynamics through propulsion, flight control, navigation, communication, and real-world applications. Each part of the book can, to a reasonable extent, be read independently by readers with the appropriate prerequisite background (undergraduate-level dynamics, control theory, and signals and systems are assumed throughout), while the book as a whole is sequenced to build cumulatively, from historical and regulatory foundations in Part I, through physical design in Parts II and III, to control, autonomy, communication, and application in Parts IV through VI. A note on scope and currency: unmanned systems regulation, in particular, changes faster than any printed text can track in real time. Every regulatory figure, date, and threshold cited in this book has been checked…