Evolutionary Pathways and Future Trends of Civil UAV Technologies: A Patent-Based Data-Driven Analysis

Civil unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) serve increasingly diverse applications, yet their technological structure, evolutionary pathways, and future trends remain difficult to characterize. This study analyzes global civil UAV invention patents from the PatSnap database (2005–2024) by integrating BERTopic-based topic identification, semantic–intensity-coupled evolution analysis, and self-attention-enhanced long short-term memory (SA-LSTM) forecasting. Of 61,715 screened patent records, 59,217 texts remained for topic modeling after deduplication by application number and removal of records with missing or invalid text. We identify 30 technology topics grouped into nine categories and distinguish three stages of development: foundational platform development, intelligent capability enhancement, and networked system development. Four major pathways are revealed: from single-UAV stability control to swarm intelligence; from lithium-ion batteries to alternative energy systems and automated replenishment; from point-to-point communication to networked low-altitude systems; and from single-mission applications to integrated multi-scenario operations. Forecasts for 2025–2029 indicate heterogeneous topic trajectories, suggesting development potential in low-altitude communication networks, swarm control, and emerging power systems. Together, these findings provide patent-based evidence to support technology monitoring, screening of candidate R&D directions, and planning of subsequent engineering assessments.