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UAVenture and Daedalean have published a teaser video announcing a new guidance system for professional UAVs. The system is called Magpie and provides unrivaled AI-powered functions – vision based identification of emergency landing sites during flight, as well as visual navigation that helps sustain GPS outages – in a less than 500g package, and completely integrated with the AirRails flight controller: no additional complex setup & coding required. No pre-marking of landing spots is required, Magpie is able to operate without pre-surveying of the area and recognise dynamic obstacles on the ground. The product will be available soon for the users of AirRails, UAVenture's flight control system for professional drones.

That's how much data humanity generates every single day. And the amount is increasing; we've created 90% of the world's data in the last two years alone. It should come as no surprise, then, that businesses today are drowning in data. That's because much of that data is unstructured; it takes the form of documents, social media content and other qualitative information that doesn't reside in conventional databases and is can't be parsed by traditional algorithms or machine analysis. Cognitive services not only cut through the deluge of data, but also bring meaning to it through human-like understanding of natural language queries.

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The latest Terminator movie, Dark Fate, struggles to give satisfying emotional arcs to its large cast of characters. Writer Sara Lynn Michener says it doesn't help that a large chunk of the movie is wasted on a bombastic action sequence set aboard an exploding cargo plane. "I think there's this idea with, especially, male directors where they get really excited about trying to top what's been done before, but do it even bigger and better and more Michael Bay-ish," Michener says in Episode 386 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Are we really doing that in 2019? Geek's Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley agrees that the cargo plane sequence was silly, and stands in sharp contrast to the sense of realism captured in the franchise's best installments, The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

The UK government has approved £2 million ($2.57 million) worth of funding for 18 projects that will develop anti-drone and drone detection technologies. The funding comes part of a competition held by the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) program under the UK's Ministry of Defence (MOD). MOD officials approved funding earlier this year, in April, after a series of amateur drone incursions froze air travel at several airports across the UK. Infamous is a three-day incident at the Gatwick Airport in London just before Christmas last year, and another day of flight cancellations in January, at Heathrow, London, one of the world's largest airports. In April, MOD, through DASA, asked the private sector for solutions to detect and neutralize "small UAS (unmanned aerial system) threats."

The travel industry is one of the biggest proponents and early adopters of AI technology and applications. AI and machine learning are a natural fit for travel, a somewhat volatile industry that ebbs and flows based on a large number of wildcard variables. Customer service has been the primary way AI is being steadily integrated into the travel experience, although there are a host of other potential applications for the technology. Hotels are a prime location for AI adoption and the Connie robot being deployed by Hilton Worldwide Hotels is one of the most well known examples. Connie is an AI-based concierge that uses AI and speech recognition to provide a variety of tourist-related information to guests who speak to it.

PITTSBURGH, PA (November 7, 2019) Mayor William Peduto, the City of Pittsburgh Department of Innovation & Performance, the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh, the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh, and Allegheny County Airport Authority today announced the fifth cohort of the PGH Lab program. PGH Lab connects local startup companies with the City of Pittsburgh and local authorities, and independent institutions to explore new ways to use technology and innovative solutions to help improve city operations. The program provides an opportunity for local startups to test their beta-stage products and services in a real-world environment for three-four months. The City of Pittsburgh and the participating authorities have successfully completed four cycles and engaged 21 local startups, putting forth a variety of technological and innovative solutions ranging from waste management and composting to business processes and automation to immigrant inclusion initiatives. For the fifth cycle, three different startups will be joining PGH Lab.

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems and programs use data analytics and algorithms to perform functions that typically would require human intelligence and reasoning. Some types of AI are programmed to follow specific rules and logic to produce targeted outputs. In these cases, individuals can understand the reasoning behind a system's conclusions or recommendations by examining its programming and coding. However, many of today's cutting-edge AI technologies -- particularly machine learning systems that offer great promise for transforming healthcare -- have more opaque reasoning, making it difficult or impossible to determine how they produce results. This unknown functioning is referred to as "black-box reasoning" or "black-box decision-making."

Developing a master plan to transform John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. Keeping beachgoers safe from polluted waters in New Zealand with advanced analytics. Those are just a few of the thousands of complex projects delivered each year by Mott MacDonald, a global engineering, management and development consulting firm headquartered in London. With 180 principal offices in 50 countries, the company helps solve some of the world's most urgent social, environmental and economic challenges. Because Mott MacDonald doesn't create physical products, its success relies on the knowledge and expertise of its 16,000 employees.

Facial recognition technology is convenient. Many of us use it numerous times a day to unlock our smartphones. Although people often access their phones with Face ID or fingerprints, many still worry about their privacy when their biometric data are used in the public space. There is a fine line between consensual identity verification and non-consensual surveillance. Delta Airlines opened the nation's first biometric terminal at Atlanta's Hartsfield Jackson International Airport (ATL) in November 2018.