Recent Advances for Generative AI-Enabled Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems and Applicable Technologies

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been key platforms to perform sensing, analytics and automation across intelligent transportation, construction, smart agriculture, logistics and defense. Generative AI (GenAI) accelerates intelligence of UAVs by creating synthetic data, simulating environments and improving learning with restricted data conditions. When integrated with digital twin and AI frameworks, GenAI enables advanced design, modeling, adaptation and making a decision. In this paper, we survey recent advances for generative AI-enabled UAVs systems and applicable scenarios. Then, we categorize four applicable research branches using generative AI-enabled UAVs for intelligent transportation systems, digital twin and smart infrastructure, smart agriculture, last-mile logistics and delivery.