UAV is the collective name for the large diversity of aerial craft in civil and military use with no human pilot on board. This group includes model helicopters, drones, un-tethered motorised airships and other remotely and/or radio controlled machines. New versions of this class are constantly being designed and upgraded to provide commercial aerial photography services (stills and HD video), as well as overt and covert surveillance for the police and military.

UAVs are now regularly used for commercial aerial photography projects and are considered the method of choice for capturing 360 degree imagery. (See case study at bottom of page).

ADVANTAGES: The various craft in this category offer different advantages and have widely different capabilities and applications. Probably the main general advantage is that they are able to work at much lower altitudes than full size helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft and consequently offer greater operational flexibility. UAVs are quick and easy to deploy at short notice and can take still photographs or HD video at specified heights and extremely close up the to the subject. They can take off from almost any reasonably sized space and can be used for low level surveys and many other exacting tasks where alternative methods are unsuitable. These vehicles offer a useful method of achieving difficult photographic objectives where no other method is suitable. With the increasing miniaturization of technology they have become widely used in commercial photographic applications, especially as they can carry small high resolution 18MP cameras, as seen in the photographs below. UAVs can be precisely positioned in the sky and can be flown to pre-set GPS positions and automatically held there long enough to take a series of overlapping photographs to stitch together to form 360 degree panoramas. There is a trend to use UAVs more and more as their sophistication, and that of the cameras they carry, increases and the demand grows for more exacting aerial photography by commercial clients.

DISADVANTAGES: The different types of craft have different limitations but all are regulated by the CAA with regard to airspace policy. Some have limited distance and height ranges and the time they can remain up in the air. Most of the larger helicopters (ie length of 3 - 5 feet or so) used by professional companies, have a sufficiently good payload to enable them to carry professional camera equipment, although some smaller craft do not. Sometimes the locations that radio controlled craft are legally allowed to operate in are limited by the CAA for safety reasons (eg over congested areas), although all commercially registered vehicles are required by law to have failsafe mechanisms to shut down the throttle in the unlikely event of a failure in their radio link and sometimes equipped to fly back to a predetermined 'home' location. Unlike helium balloons, which are able to remain in the sky for many hours at a time, UAVs are not able to remain in the air for long and need their batteries changing every 15-20 minutes or so. This is not a problem, but more of an inconvenience as it limits the continuous flight times for certain assignments.

HEIGHT RANGE: The height and distance should never be beyond the pilot's unobstructed line of sight, usually up to 500 feet or so, for normal civilian aerial photography.

CASE STUDY:  A UAV was selected for this demanding project because the assignment required photographs taken at very precise points in the sky at different altitudes and in a very confined space. The property developer who commissioned Sky Eye wanted high quality marketing photographs of the views that the prospective occupants would have when the riverside tower was completed. It was essential the machine didn't stray into the airspace over the river, which is a designated helicopter route, and therefore a highly controllable and powerful craft was used which could resist the wind blowing it off its vertical trajectory. At each height, a series of overlapping images were taken from the same point to allow all the images to be stitched together afterwards to form 360 degree panoramas. The state-of-the-art UAV below, being operated by Sky Eye and a specialist UAV pilot, is seen flying up to 350 feet where it took pictures which precisely corresponded to the various floor levels (plus 1.6m to represent eye level) of the proposed tower. One of the single shot views is shown below, with The London Eye in the background, and the full 360 degree panorama is shown at the bottom.

(For examples of HD video footage taken with this UAV, please contact Sky Eye for a show reel).