The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are finding new applications in every sector of the market. In the military sector, UAVs are being used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. In the civil sector, UAVs are being used for many purposes, like meteorological study, homeland security, environmental monitoring, etc. This paper recounts the various uses of the UAVs in various industries, and describes how the onboard video systems play a decisive role in the information gathering capabilities of the UAVs.

As per the survey done by NASA [Ref 3], UAVs can find many applications in the fields of Civil, Agriculture and Military. And truly, UAVs are finding applications in the fields of military and civil. Typically for all the applications of UAVs, the key component is the onboard Video System. In Civil applications, the video systems are used for homeland security, environmental monitoring, meteorological study, scientific research etc. And most prominently in the Military applications of the UAVs, the video systems are used for reconnaissance, intelligent surveillance and target acquisition, etc. The UAVs are also being used for agricultural applications to monitor the details like the spread of locusts, the condition of the crop, etc [Ref 1].