OREANDA-NEWS UAVs have a number of advantages that are not available to manned vehicles. For example, UAVs can be used to test equipment, as well as to perform flights that pose a danger to pilots. Usually drones are created "from scratch", however, there are projects to transform conventional aircraft into unmanned aerial vehicles. 

The ROBOpilot system, created by a research laboratory at the US Air Force, allows not only modifying ordinary light aircraft and turning them into unmanned ones, but also performing, if necessary, the inverse transformation. That is, the system can be easily dismantled and an ordinary airplane can be obtained again. 

ROBOpilot acts on the mechanical controls of the aircraft using special computer-controlled actuators. The reliability of such a solution raises a lot of questions, however, a drone based on an ordinary light aircraft still flies successfully. It is worth noting that there are similar systems designed not only for aircraft, but also for helicopters.