Abstract: With China's sustained and rapid economic growth,the energy demand is becoming greater and greater.The existing resources are unable to meet the economic need,so there is a urgent need to find the new mineral resources.Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) just meet the need of high efficiency resource exploration,for UAVs is a low-cost,flexible operation and no casualties aerial moving detection platform.This paper introduced the domestic and international application status of UAVs for geophysical surveying in detail.The advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of UAVs for geophysical surveying were proposed and the existing problems of the UAVs for geophysical surveying were discussed.