Yesterday at CES, Quanergy, an automotive startup based in Sunnyvale, Calif., held a press conference to announce the S3, a solid-state LIDAR system designed primarily to bring versatile, comprehensive, and affordable sensing to autonomous cars. The S3 is small, has no moving parts, and in production volume will be US 250 or less. According to Quanergy, the S3 is better than traditional LIDAR systems in every single way, and will make it easier and cheaper for robots of all kinds to sense what's going on in the world around them. LIDAR systems work by firing laser pulses out into the world and then watching to see if the light reflects off of something. By starting a timer when the pulse goes out and then stopping the timer when the sensor sees a reflection, the LIDAR can do some math to figure out how far away the source of the reflection is. And by keeping careful track of where it's pointing the laser, the LIDAR gets all of the data that it needs to place the point in 3D space.

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.

There's still a huge amount of radioactive waste cleanup to do at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. Some of that cleanup can be done by careful humans. And there's some that's too dangerous for humans, but not quite dangerous enough to dissuade robots. Clearing the fuel rods out of the pool in reactor 3 is one of those tasks, and Toshiba has built a robot to tackle it. If you had to pick somewhere to eat a picnic lunch in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, inside the containment building of reactor 3 probably wouldn't be at the top of your list, but it also wouldn't be at the very bottom.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your weaponized Automaton bloggers. We'll be also 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. Intel's 100-drone performance was quite a spectacle: It's worth clicking through to Intel's page on this to see all the pretty pictures. To navigate snowy roads, Ford autonomous vehicles are equipped with high-resolution 3D maps – complete with information about the road and what's above it, including road markings, signs, geography, landmarks and topography.

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?

Velo3D, based in Santa Clara, Calif., has 22.1 million in venture investment to do something in 3-D printing: That makes it fourth among 2015's best-funded stealth-mode tech companies in the United States, according to CB Insights. This dollar number is about all the hard news that has come out of this startup, founded in 2014 by Benyamin Butler and Erel Milshtein. But job postings, talks at conferences, and other breadcrumbs left along Velo3D's development trail--has created a sketchy outline of this company's plans. Consider which 3-D printing technology is ready for disruption: metal. Printing of metal objects--done regularly in industry, particularly aerospace--uses a different, and, to date, far more expensive technology: selective laser sintering.

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.

In retrospect, it seems crazy that we sent people to the moon with nothing there waiting for them. If something had gone wrong, there was no Plan B. We're probably not going to take a risk like that again, which is why we're working so hard on robots that can go to the moon or Mars to get things all set up and running and warm and cozy for us in advance. Setting up bases and habitats and doing exploring and whatnot may be the exciting extraterrestrial work, but there's other Very Important things that need to be done. One of the most important things is a high quality landing pad, and the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration (PISCES) has gotten a teleoperated robot to build one. The reason that you need a landing pad is that dust on the moon (and on Mars) is nasty, nasty stuff.

On tap at the brewpub. A nice dark red color with a nice head that left a lot of lace on the glass. Aroma is of raspberries and chocolate. Not much depth to speak of despite consisting of raspberries. The bourbon is pretty subtle as well. I really don't know that find a flavor this beer tastes like. I would prefer a little more carbonization to come through. It's pretty drinkable, but I wouldn't mind if this beer was available.

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.