：Since the practice by using the “aerosonde” in mornitoring typhoon in 1997, the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have attracted widespread attention because of their riskfree casualty and relatively low cost advantages. With the rapid development of UAVs technology, and the continued improvement of payload and endurance capacities, more and more special observational instruments have been mounted on the UAVs. Particulary, since the “Global Hawk” was successfully used in the hurricane mornitoring experiment in 2010, the integrated and collaborative aircraft observations based on UAVs, including drop sounding and nearsurface flying, have become the trend. This paper briefly outlined the development of UAVs and their application to the detection of tropical cyclone, including the practice and trends. The aimes were to promote the practice of using the UAVs in tropical cyclone observation, and to improve its operational detection system development.