REVIEW article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Sustainable and Intelligent Phytoprotection
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancing Plant Science with UAVs: Precision in Agricultural Sensing, Targeted Protection, and PhenotypingView all 9 articles
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Payload Technology Applications in Agriculture and Other Low-altitude Scenarios: A Review
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang, China
- 2Shenyang University, Shenyang, China
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Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), as a new generation of intelligent equipment, has gradually become an essential tool across multiple industries due to its high maneuverability and strong task adaptability. UAV payload technology (UPT) serves as a key support for enhancing mission performance and expanding application scenarios. UPT is being rapidly integrated into agriculture and other key fields, emerging as a driving force for the low-altitude economy and intelligent operations. This study systematically analyzed and discussed the development status of UPT, its typical application scenarios, and the challenges faced. By conducting a comprehensive review of global research on UPT from 2012 to 2025, this review summarized research hotspots and revealed evolutionary trends. The findings demonstrated that UPT had made notable progress in typical application areas, including crop monitoring, precision agricultural operations, agricultural product harvesting and aerial transportation, power line inspection, emergency rescue, and logistics. However, UPT was still constrained by limited autonomous perception and path planning capabilities, insufficient universality of payload platforms, a lack of standardized device interfaces, as well as challenges related to endurance, communication, and operational stability under adverse weather conditions. Future research should focus on lightweight and multifunctional payload design, intelligent operation control, and modular and standardized integration, while building a “satellite-UAV-ground” collaborative perception and decision-making system. The outcomes of this study provide both theoretical reference and practical guidance for promoting UAV adoption in agriculture and other low-altitude application scenarios, thereby contributing to the sustainable development of smart agriculture and the low-altitude economy.
Keywords: Agriculture, UAV, payload technology, Application scenarios, low-altitude economy
Received: 09 Oct 2025; Accepted: 26 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yao, Liu, Liu, Zheng, Wang, Yu, Chen and Guo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Chunling Chen
Shuang Guo
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