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  4. Vol 7, Issue 2, 2026

UAV Flight Test Technology: Evolution, Current Status, and Intelligent Trends

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DOI: 10.23977/autml.2026.070210 | Downloads: 7 | Views: 45

Author(s)

Wenlai Zhu 1, Yizhe Zhang 1, Lufan Li 1, Wei Zhang 1

Affiliation(s)

1 School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, 710072, China

Corresponding Author

Wenlai Zhu

ABSTRACT

Flight test technology is essential for the finalization, safe operation, and capability iteration of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), and its evolution tracks the advance of UAS platforms, control methods, and payloads. This paper divides the century-long history into six technological stages and uses them to clarify how flight-test practice evolved at each stage. Current development status and bottlenecks are then examined across four dimensions: flight platform testing, mission system testing, autonomy capability evaluation, and digital twin and virtual flight testing. Looking ahead, the paper discusses closed-loop digital-twin testing, standardized intelligent evaluation, large-scale swarm verification, human-unmanned collaborative testing, intelligent airworthiness systems, and combat-oriented countermeasure testing. Overall, UAS flight test technology has grown from initial remote-control feasibility checks into a comprehensive system spanning the full flight envelope, mission chain, and combat scenarios, and it is now being reshaped by intelligence demands so that UAS can operate in highly contested environments.

KEYWORDS

Unmanned aircraft system; Flight test technology; Development stages; Intelligence; Digital twin; Autonomy capability evaluation

CITE THIS PAPER

Wenlai Zhu, Yizhe Zhang, Lufan Li, Wei Zhang. UAV Flight Test Technology: Evolution, Current Status, and Intelligent Trends. Automation and Machine Learning (2026). Vol. 7, No. 2, 86-90. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/autml.2026.070210.

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