What counts as autonomous?
The word “drone” is used loosely, and so is “autonomous.” Three situations are worth separating. A remotely piloted aircraft has a human flying it by radio, often with a video view. An automated aircraft follows a pre-programmed path or a fixed routine, as an old autopilot does. A truly autonomous aircraft senses its surroundings and decides what to do within its goals, which can include avoiding obstacles or choosing how to complete a task. Early machines fit the first two descriptions. Because of this, the answer to “what was the first autonomous drone?” depends on where one draws the line, and several candidates deserve mention.
Gyroscopes and early flying bombs
An essential ingredient was the gyroscope-based autopilot, demonstrated by Lawrence Sperry in 1914, which kept an aircraft level without constant pilot input. During the First World War, the US Navy and the Sperry company worked on the Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane, a pilotless aircraft meant to fly a set distance and strike a target. Test flights in 1917 and 1918 had mixed results. Around the same time, an Army-supported project led by Charles Kettering produced a small biplane known as the “Kettering Bug,” designed to fly a preset course and then drop its engine and wings onto a target. It used timing and gyroscopes to know when to dive. Neither system saw combat, but they are often cited among the earliest unmanned aircraft with automatic guidance.
Target drones between the wars
In the 1930s, navies and air forces needed realistic targets to train anti-aircraft gunners. The British radio-controlled de Havilland Queen Bee, introduced in the mid-1930s, was a reusable target aircraft based on a Tiger Moth. It is commonly said that the term “drone” for unmanned aircraft came from this Queen Bee, a nod to the male bee that follows the queen, though that origin is reported by many sources rather than proven.
In the United States, Reginald Denny, a film actor and model aircraft enthusiast, built radio-controlled targets and sold them to the Army. His company’s Radioplane OQ-2 was produced in large numbers during the Second World War. These were radio-controlled aircraft rather than autonomous ones, but they pushed forward the technology of small engines, radio links and recoverable aircraft.
Jet-age drones and reconnaissance
After 1945, jet-powered target drones such as the Ryan Firebee, first flown around 1951, became standard. Variants were later adapted for reconnaissance during the Vietnam War, flying preprogrammed routes over enemy territory with cameras and returning to be recovered by parachute. These flights were automatic rather than flown in real time by a pilot, and this ability to follow a stored route is a step toward what people now call autonomy.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Israel and other countries developed smaller surveillance drones that sent live video back to operators. Lower-cost electronics and better aircraft engines helped such programs, and the success of those systems influenced designers worldwide.
GPS, computers and larger unmanned aircraft
Reliable satellite positioning changed matters. With GPS receivers on board, an aircraft could navigate to waypoints anywhere without relying on ground signals. In the 1990s, the United States introduced the Predator, which first flew in the mid-1990s as a reconnaissance drone and later carried weapons. Controlled by pilots through satellite links, it was remotely piloted rather than autonomous. The larger Global Hawk, which first flew in 1998, was designed to take off, fly a mission and land with far less human input, with a ground operator supervising rather than steering. For this reason, it is sometimes placed among the first highly automated unmanned aircraft.
Consumer drones and software
In the 2000s and 2010s, cheap sensors, small silicon chips and lithium-ion batteries made small multirotor aircraft practical. Hobbyists built flight controllers that stabilized quadcopters using gyroscopes and accelerometers. In 2010, the French company Parrot released the AR.Drone, which was flown using a smartphone, and later products from several manufacturers added GPS return-to-home, obstacle sensing and automatic subject tracking.
These features pushed the line between remote control and autonomy further. A modern consumer drone can hold position, return to its takeoff point if the signal is lost and avoid some obstacles on its own. Researchers working on artificial intelligence are developing drones that navigate unfamiliar spaces without maps, including inside buildings where GPS signals are weak.
The takeaway
There is no clean answer to which drone was first autonomous. The Kettering Bug and Hewitt-Sperry craft were early automatic flyers, the Queen Bee and the Radioplane targets were radio-controlled, the Firebee followed stored routes, and today’s drones combine all of these abilities. Each step added a little more decision-making to the machine and took a little more from the human pilot, which is why the history is best seen as a gradual change in who or what is flying.