President Barack Obama speaks at the South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) on March 11 in Austin, Texas. AUSTIN -- SXSW is all about FOMO. Between the festival's events being scattered across the city and a designed-for-dismay schedule that can schedule dozens panels on top of each other, this annual gathering is guaranteed to inflict Fear Of Missing Out. I'd like to think that I've learned how to manage this chaos--I've attended SXSW's tech-oriented Interactive conference every year since 2012--but instead, I kept hearing about fascinating things I'd missed via comments like "great emoji panel" (yes, actual event) or "they had drones delivering piñatas" (apparently that happened too). The only sane response is to accept that you don't run your SXSW schedule--your current location does.

The pilot of a Lufthansa passenger jumbo jet has reported that a drone aircraft nearly collided with his airliner on its landing approach to Los Angeles, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The close encounter between the wide-body, four-engine Airbus A380 and the drone occurred at about 1.30pm at an altitude of 5,000ft (152 metres) as the unmanned aircraft passed about 200ft (61 meters) over the Lufthansa flight 14 miles (22.5 km) east of the city's international airport, the FAA said. No evasive action was taken by the airline crew, and the plane, Lufthansa Flight 456, safely made its landing minutes later without further incident, according to FAA spokesman Ian Gregor. The FAA immediately alerted the Los Angeles police department's air support division. The number of passengers and crew aboard the plane was not reported by authorities, nor was the flight's origin.

JUDY WOODRUFF: A movie thriller being released nationally today delves into the practical, legal and moral issues surrounding drone warfare. HELEN MIRREN, Actress: We need to put a Hellfire through that roof right now. JEFFREY BROWN: It's a new kind of warfare, advanced technology that tracks, identifies, and has the power to destroy enemies by remote control from thousands of miles away. HELEN MIRREN: We have two suicide vests with explosives inside that house. JEFFREY BROWN: But as the film "Eye in the Sky" asks, should it be used?

Baidu Inc. BIDU 2.44 % will soon start testing autonomous cars in the U.S., part of the Chinese tech giant's effort to introduce a commercially viable model by 2018. The move, disclosed by Baidu's chief scientist Andrew Ng in an interview late Tuesday, is a significant step for the company, which is trying to get ahead in the race to build autonomous cars and is now calling on the resources of its Silicon Valley tech center to advance the effort. At the same time, Baidu is advocating for better coordination with the U.S. government, which the company says is necessary to get self-driving cars on the road. Central to the push is Mr. Ng, an artificial-intelligence scientist who conducted groundbreaking research at Stanford University and at Alphabet Inc. GOOGL -0.40 % 's Google. Late last year, Beijing-based Baidu became the latest technology company to publicize its intention to develop self-driving cars.

Midway through the first of five recent matches between Lee Sedol, a top-ranked professional Go player, and AlphaGo, a computer program conceived by Google DeepMind, an odd thing happened: Lee's jaw dropped, hanging open for a nigh-cartoonish twenty seconds, and then he laughed. AlphaGo had just mounted an aggressive, and evidently unexpected, attack. The moment was reminiscent of a famous episode in Go history, when Honinbo Shusaku, a future legend of the game, squared off against Inoue Genan Inseki, an older and more experienced player, in 1846. The story goes that a spectator--a local doctor who knew little of Go--correctly guessed that the seventeen-year-old Shusaku was beating Inseki. Asked how he knew, the doctor responded that, after an earlier move, Inseki's ears had flushed red, a clear indication of surprise.

This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE. Science fiction authors love the robot sidekick. R2-D2, Commander Data, and KITT--just to name a few--defined "Star Wars," "Star Trek," and "Knight Rider," respectively, just as much as their human actors. While science has brought us many of the inventions dreamed of in sci-fi shows, one major human activity has remained low tech and a huge source of frustration: household chores.

Last week was a holiday, and we're at CES this week, but nothing can stop the robot videos. Things should be back to normal around here next week (we hope). Let us know if you have videos or events to suggest, and enjoy today's Video Friday selection! Teaching robots how to avoid destruction and despise humanity at the same time is never a good idea. The world's most advanced bat robot now has membrane wings, just like real bats: A microprocessor-based onboard computer, a 6 DOF IMU sensor package, five DC motors with encoder feedback for flapping and wing articulation (asymmetric wing folding and leg/tail control), power/comm electronics, carbon-fiber frame, 3D printed parts, and silicone based membrane wings -- all at 92 grams.

In essence, performing reconnaissance is all about trying to find something that you really don't want to find. Maybe you're looking for enemy forces, or maybe you're trying to locate sources of chemical or biological or radiological contamination. In any case, having a team of humans finding what they're looking for, while technically a success, is not really something to look forward to. "Oh hey, looks like we found that insanely dangerous thing we've been searching for, hooray!" You know what comes next: let's get the robots to do this sort of thing instead, right?

It is the year 2023, and for the first time, a self-driving car navigating city streets strikes and kills a pedestrian. A lawsuit is sure to follow. But exactly what laws will apply? Today, the law is scrambling to keep up with the technology, which is moving forward at a breakneck pace, thanks to efforts by Apple, Audi, BMW, Ford [pdf], General Motors, Google, Honda, Mercedes, Nissan, Nvidia, Tesla, Toyota, and Volkswagen. Google's prototype self-driving cars, with test drivers always ready to take control, are already on city streets in Mountain View, Calif., and Austin, Texas. In the second half of 2015, Tesla Motors began allowing owners (not just test drivers) to switch on its Autopilot mode.

Someday, U.S. soldiers fighting in the streets of a sprawling megacity will need an airdrop of ammunition, food, or water that can't be safely delivered by ground convoy or helicopter. But the supplies parachuting from the skies won't have to rely on GPS signals that suffer from inaccuracy in cluttered city environments or can be disrupted by enemies. The U.S. military has been testing new supply airdrops that can automatically aim for a precise landing based on images of the target area. Recent tests of the U.S. Army's Joint Precision Airdrop System (JPADS) have been trying new navigational software--developed by the Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass., and other companies--to achieve GPS-style accuracy with images alone. The software figures out its current location by comparing ground terrain features, such as trees or buildings seen by onboard cameras, with the latest satellite or drone images of the target area in its database.