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?

It wouldn't be CES without a new drone from Parrot. Not that we're complaining: Parrot makes awesome drones. You can probably guess what's new about the Disco, though: a pronounced lack of rotors and the addition of a symmetrical pair of passive lifting surfaces. In other words, it's got wings. As soon as we saw this thing, we were like, "Oh, that looks familiar!"

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.

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. The DARPA Robotics Challenge this past summer showcased how far humanoid robots have come--but also how far they have yet to go before they can tackle real-world practical applications. Even the best of the DRC behemoths stumbled and fell down, proving, as IEEE Spectrum noted at the time, that "not walking is a big advantage." There is, in fact, a new not-walking way for robots to perform many kinds of tasks better and faster: the dexterous drone.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your stigmergic Automaton bloggers. We're 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. "Academy Award -nominated director Orlando von Einsiedel, Executive Producer J.J. Abrams, Bad Robot and Epic Digital have joined forces with Google and XPRIZE to create a documentary web series about the people competing for the Google Lunar XPRIZE. The Google Lunar XPRIZE is the largest prize competition of all time with a reward of 30 million and aims to incentivize entrepreneurs to create a new era of affordable access to the Moon and beyond, while inspiring the next generation of scientists, engineers, and explorers." "DARPA's Vertical Takeoff and Landing Experimental Plane (VTOL X-Plane) program seeks to provide innovative cross-pollination between fixed-wing and rotary-wing technologies and by developing and integrating novel subsystems to enable radical improvements in vertical and cruising flight capabilities.

Editors Note: This week IEEE Spectrum is covering CeBIT, the enormous information and communications technology show that takes place annually in Hanover, Germany. For up-to-the-second updates, you can follow our CeBIT Ninja, Stephen Cass, on Twitter (@stephencass), or catch daily highlights throughout the week here. Once upon a time there was a very odd British television show called The Prisoner, which featured a secret agent repeatedly attempting to escape from a mysterious village. One of the biggest threats the agent faced was a giant balloon called Rover, which would pursue and subdue rule-breaking villagers. Now Rover has been brought to reality, albeit in a much more adorable version, thanks to the engineers at Aerotain and their Skye inflatable drone.

Editors Note: This week IEEE Spectrum is covering CeBIT, the enormous information and communications technology show that takes place annually in Hanover, Germany. For up-to-the-second updates, you can follow our CeBIT Ninja, Stephen Cass, on Twitter (@stephencass), or catch daily highlights throughout the week here. The World Wide Web is the most famous technology to emerge from the needs of the international particle physics research center CERN, but it's not the only one. In the latest example, a lightweight, inexpensive (and maker-friendly) range sensor has come about because scientists want to use drones to survey tunnels and vaults without smashing into expensive and difficult to replace equipment. CERN's massive subterranean facility lies underneath farm fields between Geneva and the Jura mountains.

"This is one more incident that could have brought down an airliner, and it's completely unacceptable," she said in a statement. Operators also must keep their drones away from other aircraft and groups of people. The FAA has received at least 42 reports of drones flying unsafely near LAX, the nation's second-busiest airport, since April 2014, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis last fall of federal data released by Feinstein. The data shows nearly 200 pilot reports of close encounters involving drones in California alone during the past two years, the most of any state, according to the Times. In a 2014 letter to the FAA, Feinstein cited three instances in which drones flew dangerously close to passenger planes near major airports -- two on the same day in May of that year at New York City's LaGuardia Airport and LAX, and another at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York in March 2013.

Battery technology has been accused of falling behind technology, with everything from phones to drones hit by it. Now a new fuel cell could change the way we charge and let you talk, text and WhatsApp for a week on a single charge - and keep drones airborne for an hour. The tiny solid oxide fuel cell is just 1.95 millimeters in diameter that combines porous stainless steel and a thin-film electrolyte and electrodes, and has shown'enhanced thermal robustness'. From irrigating crops to disaster relief to delivering pizza, the capabilities of drones are growing but small battery capacity limits flight time to less than an hour. Researchers developed a new technology that combines porous stainless steel, which is thermally and mechanically strong and highly stable to oxidation/reduction reactions, with thin-film electrolyte and electrodes of minimal heat capacity.

A highly secretive Pentagon organization is experimenting with'micro-drones' which could one day take to the sky like a like a swarm of robotic locusts. The experiments led by the Strategic Capabilities Office were conducted in Alaska last summer, according to The Washington Post, during which the tiny drones were launched from fighter jets. After launch, the 3-D printed micro-drones break free of a canister and seek each other out to create a swarm. The micro-drones have inch-wide propellers, and can be launched from the flare dispensers of F-16 and F/A-18 fighter jets. After launch, they descend in a parachute-equipped canister and then break free.