Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. We already posted about the Atlas doing parkour video, which Marc Raibert first showed at IROS earlier this month; he also showed this video, which is just as interesting (if not quite as dramatic), since it shows SpotMini in what could be its first realistic commercial application. We have begun field testing the Spot robot for commercial usage around the world.

China is moving towards merging AI with humans, and the United States Defense Intelligence Agency sees this as a major concern for the future of warfare. Lt. General Ashley begins his talk at 32:20 in the above video by the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service Speaking at the Association of the United States Army annual meeting on October 8, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Director Lieutenant General Robert P. Ashley, Jr. said that one of the biggest decisions that the United States military will have to make is how to deal with the "integration of humans and machines" that China is pursuing. "China is progressively pursuing a 2025 strategy where they want to be the main driver of AI, not only for their economic but for their industrial transformation," said Ashley. "Whoever leads in AI will rule the world." "The character of war is constantly changing, and we see AI as we see some of these disruptive technologies that continue to change the character of war -- the complexity and the speed of human interaction. Our task is to understand how they operate," said the DIA director.

As 2018 continues on its downward slope toward a new year, artificial intelligence technologies are becoming more and more useful in every aspect of our lives. Just look around: They're in our smartphones, our social networks, our home smart speakers, our personal vehicles--you name it, there's AI at work somewhere. In fact, experts predict they will only become more prevalent in both our personal and professional experiences, and that's not much of a stretch to believe. Now, as with any newly widespread technology, we're confronted with a global need to make best of use of all this new IT; specifically, how to educate our communities on how to apply guard rails that will ensure the use of AI as both ethical and beneficial to all. There are lots of questions to be answered here; we can only get to a few right now.

The two astronauts involved in a crash landing after a Russian launch when wrong will head back up to space in the same rocket. The head of Russia's space agency said that the pair have been provisionally scheduled to fly back to the International Space Station in spring of next year. And his equivalent at Nasa said he had full confidence in the Soyuz rocket, despite the potentially catastrophic failure observed during the latest launch. From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station.

This is a rush transcript from "The Five," October 11, 2018. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated. It's 5 o'clock in New York City, and this is "The Five." It's the event everybody is talking about, Kanye West's America first sit down with President Trump at the White House. KANYE WEST, ARTIST: You know they try to scare me to not wear this hat, my old friends. But this hat it gives me power, in a way. WATTERS: We're going to have more of Kanye in the West Wing ahead. But first, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, and Eric Holder are under fire for their recent comments attacking Republicans. HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about. ERIC HOLDER, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: Michelle would say, you know, when they go low, we go high. When they go low, we kick them. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Better be careful what he's wishing for, that I can tell you. He better be careful what he's wishing for. UNINDENTIFIED MALE: What do you mean? TRUMP: That's a disgusting statement for him to make. For him to make a statement like that is a very dangerous statement. You know, they talk about us. WATTERS: And Congressman Steve Scalise, who was shot by a deranged left-wing gunman, is calling out the left's mob mentality. Writing, quote, if they want change, they need to convince people with their ideas and actually win elections rather than call for violent resistance, harassment, and mob rule. Meanwhile, Holder is predictably backtracking. Tweeting, quote, OK, stop the fake outrage. In fact, when I was A.G., violent crime in the U.S. was historically low. I'm saying Republicans are undermining our democracy and Democrats need to be tough, proud, and stand up for the values we believe in.

Arizona, a state that has been quite open to self-driving technology, has now created the Institute for Automated Mobility (IAM), a consortium focused on autonomous vehicle research, safety and policy. Overseen by the Arizona Commerce Authority, IAM brings together the state's transportation and public safety departments, private industry and three state universities, which will work to develop industry standards and best practices in regards to self-driving technology. "The Institute for Automated Mobility will bring together global industry leaders, a public sector team and the brightest minds in academia, focused on advancing all aspects of automated vehicle science, safety and policy," Governor Doug Ducey said in a statement. "Arizona is committed to providing the leadership and knowledge necessary to integrate these technologies into the world's transportation systems." Once completed, IAM will include research facilities, simulation labs and a safety test track that can accomodate different road and traffic configurations.

Machine learning systems are more advanced than they ever have been, but a critical component is still missing: machine common sense. Machine common sense is "the basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge things that are shared by nearly all people and can be reasonably expected of nearly all people without need for debate." DARPA believes that possessing this knowledge could significantly advance the relationship between humans and machines, but encoding this capability is a difficult task. "The absence of common sense prevents an intelligent system from understanding its world, communicating naturally with people, behaving reasonably in unforeseen situations, and learning from new experiences," said Dave Gunning, a program manager in DARPA's Information Innovation Office (I2O). "This absence is perhaps the most significant barrier between the narrowly focused AI applications we have today and the more general AI applications we would like to create in the future."

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Every two seconds, sensors measuring the United States' electrical grid collect 3 petabytes of data – the equivalent of 3 million gigabytes. Data analysis on that scale is a challenge when crucial information is stored in an inaccessible database. But researchers at Purdue University are working on a solution, combining quantum algorithms with classical computing on small-scale quantum computers to speed up database accessibility. They are using data from the U.S. Department of Energy National Labs' sensors, called phasor measurement units, that collect information on the electrical power grid about voltages, currents and power generation. Because these values can vary, keeping the power grid stable involves continuously monitoring the sensors.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey is aptly named. It is an enormous, meandering journey through ancient Greece at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war as the struggle between Sparta and Athens begins to reshape the Greek world. It will shock you with its breadth and depth: the sea hides sunken ruins, the detail of temple paintings is impeccable, authentically clothed characters wander enormous cities whilst chatting in Greek, soldiers clash on roads as citizens scatter. You play a mercenary, choosing between the equally statuesque and self-assured Kassandra or Alexios. There is an element of family drama that propels the story forward in counterpart to the overarching historical drama of the setting.

Today, the president signed the Music Modernization Act into law with various celebrities, including Kid Rock, Mike Love and John Rich, present. Officially named the Orrin G. Hatch Music Modernization Act, it was unanimously passed by both the House and the Senate, and streamlines the process for music licensing and updates rules about royalties for streaming music. That really happened.Kanye West wants Apple to build Trump an'iPlane' Nothing quite like pitching a hydrogen-powered plane, "made by Apple" to the President of the United States of America. Hardcore parkour.Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot shows upgraded agility in'Parkour' video This summer workout clip features a bipedal battery-powered robot that not only jogs, but hops over obstacles and up an uneven obstacle course with nary a bobble. The'bot now has enough processing power to use its legs, arms and torso to balance through the movements and power up each 40cm-high step, while using computer vision to locate the next one.