Machine learning is becoming an increasingly important artificial intelligence approach to building autonomous and robotic systems. One of the key challenges with machine learning is the need for many samples, the amount of data needed to learn useful behaviors is high. In addition, the robotic system is often non-operational during the training phase. This requires debugging to occur in real-world experiments with an unpredictable robot. Microsoft's Aerial Informatics and Robotics platform has a solution for these two problems: It will provide realistic simulation tools for designers and developers to generate the training data needed and will also leverage recent innovations in physics to create accurate, real-world simulations.

For many it is no more than the first port of call when a niggling question raises its head. Found on its pages are answers to mysteries from the fate of male anglerfish, the joys of dorodango, and the improbable death of Aeschylus. But beneath the surface of Wikipedia lies a murky world of enduring conflict. A new study from computer scientists has found that the online encyclopedia is a battleground where silent wars have raged for years. Since Wikipedia launched in 2001, its millions of articles have been ranged over by software robots, or simply "bots", that are built to mend errors, add links to other pages, and perform other basic housekeeping tasks.

In a bid to ensure that self-driving cars are safe when they hit the roads, the UK government has put together a new proposal. The proposal states that insurance cover for self-driving cars must offer protection for both times when the driver is in control, and when the car is in autonomous mode. Ministers hope that if the bill is passed, it will put the UK at the forefront of the modern transport revolution. In a bid to ensure that self-driving cars are safe when they hit the road, the UK government has put together a new proposal. The proposal states that insurance cover for self-driving cars must offer protection for both times when the driver is in control, and when the car is in autonomous mode. Insurers could still try to recover the costs from the vehicles' makers.

President Trump claims his administration's new and expansive executive order on undocumented immigrants is "getting really bad dudes out of this country." But aggressive enforcement of immigration laws is also sweeping up vulnerable, far-from-bad people seeking help and care. Still, even setting aside the humanitarian issue, Trump's anti-immigrant plan suffers from a fundamental flaw: bad math. The new immigration guidelines released by Department of Homeland Security chief General John Kelly this week broaden the categories of people prioritized for deportation. Instead of focusing on violent criminals, the department will now go after anyone who's ever committed fraud or misrepresented themselves to the US government--a description that essentially includes anyone who's ever lived in the country illegally.

Investigations into reported collisions by drones with civil aircraft found that they were caused instead by birds, wires and posts, or structural failures unrelated to unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), a U.S. regulator said. There has been widespread concern about the risks that the flying of drones close to aircraft can pose, and the Federal Aviation Administration said Thursday that reports of "possible" drone sightings to FAA air traffic facilities continued to increase in fiscal year 2016. There were 1,274 such reports of drone sightings from February through September last year, compared with 874 for the same period in 2015, the FAA said in a statement. Some of these sightings could have also been of birds mistaken for drones, according to analysts. The agency added that although the data contained several reports of pilots claiming drone strikes on their aircraft, the FAA has not verified any collision between a civil aircraft and a civil drone to date.

Robot-maker Sean Bielat says he's fine with the Dallas Police Department's apparently unprecedented use of a police bomb-disposal robot to kill a gunman on Thursday. "A robot was used to keep people out of harm's way in an extreme situation," said Bielat, the CEO of Endeavor Robotics, a spinoff of iRobot's military division. "That's how robots are intended to be used." Joergen Pedersen, the CEO of RE2 robotics and the chairman of the National Defense Industrial Association's robotics division concurred. "If these robots are used in manners for which they were unintended, we would expect that the officers who are there to keep citizens and themselves safe would use good judgment where the application of lethal force is a last resort," he said.

Until today, the race to build a self-driving car seemed to hinge on who had the best technology. Now it's become a case of full-blown corporate intrigue. Alphabet's self-driving startup, Waymo, is suing Uber, accusing the ridesharing giant of stealing critical autonomous driving technology. If the suit goes to trial, Apple's legal battle with Samsung could wind up looking tame by comparison. Waymo alleges that Anthony Levandovski, a former Google employee now at Uber, secretly downloaded 14,000 files from its hardware systems, resigned a month later, and then used the information to launch a self-driving truck startup called Otto.

Imagine debating the interpretation of a Shakespearean sonnet and being able to clarify its meaning with the bard himself. Or sitting in history class and being able to ask George Washington questions about the Constitution, no soul-conjuring witchcraft required. In the next decade, advancing AI technology will allow us to learn from the dead first-hand. New chatbot programs are being developed to keep our knowledge active after our physical being passes away. Early research in this topic already allows us to simulate dialogues with the dead.

Immigrant Issues: Mexico's government is not pleased with new memos from the Trump administration requiring people who arrive in the U.S. illegally over the Mexican border to be deported back to Mexico even if they're not Mexican nationals. The country may refuse to cooperate--and it has a lot of leverage. Meanwhile, former DHS secretary Janet Napolitano has emerged as a champion of Obama-era programs protecting undocumented students. But the next big policy fight might be over legal immigration, if lawmakers embrace nationalist sentiments that seek to keep everyone out. Such sentiments were a major reason why Rumana Ahmed, a Muslim woman who served on the National Security Council under Obama, chose to leave the White House eight days into Trump's presidency.

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA – SpaceX made good on a 250-mile-high delivery at the International Space Station on Thursday, after fixing a navigation problem that held up the shipment a day. Everything went smoothly the second time around as the station astronauts captured the SpaceX Dragon cargo ship as the two craft sailed over Australia. On Wednesday, a GPS system error prevented the capsule from getting close enough to be grabbed by the station's big robot arm. The Dragon -- loaded with 5,500 pounds of supplies -- rocketed away Sunday from NASA's historic moon pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Now leased by the SpaceX, the pad had been idle since the close of the shuttle program almost six years ago.