The UAS Nexus: How did we get here?

Below is a nexus diagram of some of the crucial fields and discoveries necessary for modern commercial unmanned aerial systems to exist, and some areas it is currently impacting. Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) exists at the cornerstone of several fields. At it's core, the name of UAS describes most of the key requirements to be considered a UAS: A system, usually one that serves a specific task, is airborne without a human physically contained on/in the airborne vehicle. However, each of the three criteria listed in its name: 1)Unmanned 2) Aerial vehicle 3)Acting as a system, were developed independently of each other. The number of fields responsible for these developments, either directly through technological innovation or inspiring creating through necessity, can be very lengthy. Ultimately, it required a plethora of advancements in various areas of research and technology to enable commercial UAS to exist at all. This Nexus is focused on the technological developments, and the fields that produced those developments, responsible for conventional UAS. It is important to understand that this nexus is NOT all including. For UAS to have gotten where it is today, the technological innovations had to be secured by generations of aviation methodology advancement, legal precedents, ethical understandings of privacy and property rights, and decades of development in the radio controlled vehicle hobby. These other facets not represented in the nexus are as important all the facets included within it.

Personally, I am most interested in applications and operations of unmanned aircraft. While I do appreciate the engineering discoveries, many of which are embedded here, I ultimately am most fascinated by the development of sensors and what that means for people trying to utilize the technology for a specific task.

I highly recommend downloading the image so it is much easier to read:

https://purdue0-my.sharepoint.com/:i:/g/personal/ehockrid_purdue_edu/EU8D2rAue3JElBLpZ_0rkogBug5BhE3ASWGF8n6e9cQDjQ?e=IxhI0j

The figure is designed around the concept of increasing understanding. Things towards the bottom of the chart are the most fundamental level understanding needed to produce a UAS. As you go higher up, the concepts within the chart get increasingly specific ending at applications for UAS. The color scheme follows this trend with the most fundamental being green, and increasingly complex concepts becoming more orange. It is important to understand that the arrows indicate where knowledge or inspiration came from on the tail end, and what the outcome of the interaction was on the pointed end. Obviously, fields in the base understanding category impact technologies in the refined technology category, for example, but it is implied that knowledge is carried through from the previously connected nodes. 

Hopefully, it is clear that technological progress is the key visualization in this nexus. It is often agreeable that UAS is the accumulation of a few recent major technological discoveries, the technologies embedded in the "refined technology" category. However, behind those technologies is decades of study in peripheral fields. Likewise, those fields are derivatives of more fundamental basal fields. Ultimately, with this understanding, it is clear that UAS is not the outcome of a few recent technologies but the embodiment many years of understanding. 

Once again, operational, legal, and human aspects of a UAS were omitted. This was due to the inconsistencies in their inclusion. This chart, as it stands, would be consistent regardless of geographic conditions of individuals reading it. Laws, aviation methodologies, and operating agencies all change based on region; but the development of UAS as captured here is standard virtually everywhere. The other thing that was omitted is the plethora of potential applications not contained by the broad uses listed in the nexus. There is simply too many ways drones could impact markets and cultures to list them all.   

This nexus is not immune to change. It is entirely possible that laws effecting navigational equipment, such as GPS, or autonomous vehicle operation could change how this nexus is structured in the future.