Soaring over the world's highest buildings and racing a solar-powered car across the desert may not be on your vacation itinerary this summer, but you can still see what such experiences might be like, thanks to the spectacular new IMAX film, "Dream Big: Engineering Our World." The movie takes audiences from Dubai to Australia, while sharing stirring stories about the impact engineers have on society. Narrated by Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges, it celebrates the inspiring work and people behind these engineering feats. Featured footage includes the Great Wall of China and the Golden Gate Bridge, not to mention an underwater robot developed by a team of students from an underprivileged high school in Phoenix. Made up primarily of Mexican immigrants, the robotics team entered its creation in a competition and succeeded against all odds.

Congress just stepped into the robocar game. In the past two days, a pair of senators started drafting legislation to advance autonomous vehicles, and the House Subcommittee on Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection held a two-hour hearing exploring how on the tech might be deployed. For your elected officials, it's a considerable, if tentative, step into the future of transportation. Small numbers of robocars already roam the San Francisco Bay Area and other cities, and you'll probably start riding in them within a few years as Uber and others commercialize the technology. Everything is racing ahead of a regulatory structure ill-equipped to usher in this change.

Siri made the iPhone more responsive with artificial intelligence, but now its founders want to put AI in every device you own. Dag Kittlaus, who cofounded Siri, left Apple five years ago, but now he's back with a new voice assistant named Viv that he predicts will change the way we interact with not just our phones, but our home appliances, cars, and more. Viv has gotten a lot of hype for a product that hasn't shipped yet, but Kittlaus demoed Viv publicly for the first time at TechCrunch Disrupt on Monday. Right now, Viv is an iOS app, though it won't always be. You open the app and ask the assistant questions or issue commands.

It's 2025 (give or take), and the long-awaited Big One has hit the San Francisco Bay Area. In the frenetic aftermath, teams of specialized rescue workers begin tearing through piles of wreckage--searching for signs of life, administering care, and calling for backup. As Stanford University's leading AI scientist Fei-Fei Li imagines it, they're robots with the smarts to "see" through their immediate surroundings and respond to humans in need, saving the maximum number of lives they can. The enabling technology behind this scenario is one Li has thought about and researched deeply--and it's not too far off, she argues, if computers can master what is arguably humankind's most complicated cognitive ability: vision. Current research, led by Li and the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory she directs, has already gotten us partially there, thanks to a database of more than 15 million digital images built in 2009.

With its controversial seizure and return of a U.S. underwater drone, Beijing may have inadvertently thrust into the spotlight one of the main motivations behind its ramped-up moves in the South China Sea: the quest to create a safe-haven for its sea-based nuclear deterrent. Submarines, in particular ballistic missile subs, have long figured prominently in China's desire to match the capabilities and prestige of other major nuclear powers. Slowly but surely, experts say, Beijing has made progress on this front, building a formidable program that began very early in the ruling Communist Party's history. But securing the credibility of its overall nuclear deterrent has been a challenge. "In particular, experts worry that growing U.S. missile defense, conventional precision strike, and space-based surveillance capability together allow for sophisticated preemptive attacks that pose a significant threat to China's land-based nuclear forces," Tong Zhao, a fellow at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, wrote in a June report on China's sea-based nuclear deterrent.

Beijing has returned a U.S. underwater drone seized last week in the South China Sea by a Chinese Navy vessel after "friendly" talks between the two countries, China's Defense Ministry said in a short statement posted to its website Tuesday. "After friendly consultations between the Chinese and U.S. sides, the handover work for the U.S. underwater drone was smoothly completed in relevant waters in the South China Sea at midday on Dec. 20," the statement said. The Pentagon confirmed the handover, but criticized the Chinese Navy over the move. "The incident was inconsistent with both international law and standards of professionalism for conduct between navies at sea," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said in a statement. "The U.S. has addressed those facts with the Chinese through appropriate military channels, and have called on Chinese authorities to comply with their obligations under international law."

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon says China has returned the unmanned underwater drone the Chinese Navy seized last week. In a statement issued late Monday, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook says the Chinese Navy vessel that had seized the drone returned it near the location where it had been taken. The incident occurred in the South China Sea near the Philippines. Cook says the U.S. will continue to investigate the incident. Earlier Monday he had said U.S. and Chinese officials, including military leaders, were working out logistical details for the return.

BEIJING/WASHINGTON – China on Monday rejected U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's claim that it had "stolen" an American research drone, as state media said his diplomatic inexperience could spark a confrontation between the two nations. Beijing's seizure of the marine probe in international waters in the South China Sea raised already heightened tensions between the world's two largest military powers. On Sunday, after Beijing and Washington announced the drone would be returned, Trump tweeted: "We should tell China that we don't want the drone they stole back. Trump's accusation that China had stolen the drone was "not accurate," said foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying. "Imagine that you found something on the street -- you would need to first check and verify it before handing it back to someone else," she told a regular press conference. Hua said the two sides "are in smooth communication through military channels, and we believe the incident will be properly handled." She gave no further details. The Chinese military is expected to return the probe to the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea on Tuesday, a U.S. defense official said. "A U.S. destroyer will be there," the official told AFP on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Pentagon said last week a Chinese naval vessel had "unlawfully" grabbed the unmanned underwater vehicle around 50 nautical miles northwest of Subic Bay in the Philippines. China said the drone had been snatched since it might pose a safety hazard to other vessels. It also said it "strongly opposed" U.S. reconnaissance activities and had asked Washington to stop them. The U.S. said the device was collecting information on water temperatures, salinity and sea clarity. In an earlier misspelled tweet Saturday, Trump also accused Beijing of theft. "China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters?rips it out of water and takes it to China in unpresidented act," he wrote. The state-owned China Daily rejected the claim in an editorial. "What is truly amazing about this tweet, was the soon-to-be U.S. president completely misrepresented what had actually happened -- that is more dangerous than funny," it said. Trump's behavior "could easily drive China-U.S. relations into what Obama portrays as'full-conflict mode,'" it added, next to a cartoon that depicted Trump riding a bull into a china shop while U.S. businessmen looked on aghast. A separate article quoted experts as calling Trump's behavior "diplomatically inept.

President-elect Donald Trump says the Chinese government should be told "we don't want the drone they stole back" and "let them keep it!" Trump's tweet Saturday evening came after U.S. officials confirmed that they "secured an understanding" for the return of the U.S. Navy unmanned underwater glider, which China seized in the South China Sea. The comments may extend one of the most serious incidents between the American and the Chinese militaries in years. The Chinese navy seized the drone on Thursday; the Pentagon said it was being operated by civilian contractors to conduct oceanic research. The U.S. lodged a formal diplomatic complaint and demanded the drone back.

China agreed Saturday to return an American sea drone it had captured after the Pentagon demanded it back, defusing tensions at the end of a week of confrontations over Beijing's territorial ambitions in the South China Sea. China's Defense Ministry said it would return "in an appropriate manner" the U.S. sea vessel seized this week by the Chinese navy. But the ministry also accused the U.S. of "public hyping" that was "not conducive to solving the problem smoothly." Chinese officials did not specify what happened or when Beijing would hand back the device. The ministry, in a statement, said that the device was unidentified when found and that officials later concluded it was an American drone.