A drone has successfully delivered a package to a residential location in a small Nevada town in what its maker and the governor of the state said Friday was the first fully autonomous urban drone delivery in the U.S. Flirtey CEO Matt Sweeney said the six-rotor drone flew about a half-mile along a pre-programmed delivery route on March 10 and lowered the package outside a vacant residence in an uninhabited area of Hawthorne, southeast of Reno. The route was established using GPS. A pilot and visual observers were on standby during the flight but weren't needed, Sweeney said. He said the package included bottled water, food and a first-aid kit. "Conducting the first drone delivery in an urban setting is a major achievement, taking us closer to the day that drones make regular deliveries to your front doorstep," Sweeney said. Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval congratulated the company "on successfully completing the nation's first fully autonomous urban package delivery."

Hawthorne, Nevada isn't known for much. The town of roughly 3,000 sits on the western edge of the state, near an Army ammunition depot, and not much else. Announced today, Hawthorne is now the site of what might be a historic precedent: the first urban delivery in the United States by a fully autonomous drone. Look at the expectant package receivers! The drone was flown by drone delivery company Flirtey, which got it's start in 2013 in Australia, delivering textbooks to universities, before it moved to Nevada.

The United States announced earlier this month that it had used both drones and manned aircraft to kill at least 150 al-Shabab fighters in Somalia, a move the Pentagon says was necessary to stop an imminent attack on US and African Union forces in the country. Critics of the US drone programme however, argue such strikes create more enemies than they kill. With the number of fighters joining al-Shabab having nearly doubled since 2013, how can the armed group be defeated? In this week's Arena, Somalia's former special envoy to the US Abukar Arman, who has called drone strikes a "priceless propaganda tool" for al-Shabab, is in debate with the country's former deputy prime minister Ahmed Abdisalam Adan, who says the strikes are needed. Follow UpFront on Twitter @AJUpFront and Facebook.

Flirtey, the startup that did the first FAA-sanctioned drone delivery in a rural area, has replicated the feat in an urban setting. It sent out an autonomous hexacopter on a half-a-mile flight to an empty house in Hawthorne, Nevada on March 10th, carrying food, water and a first-aid kit in a box attached to a rope. It's probably not the most secure way to transport fragile objects, though, so Amazon might have to devise another method to deliver TVs or anything breakable. The drone flew with zero human intervention -- there was a pilot on standby in case things go awry, but the team programmed its flight path beforehand.

A report of drone sightings from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) shows that despite a new registration scheme, near misses between unmanned and piloted aircraft in American are on the rise. Sightings by pilots and airport officials have steadily increased from less than one a day in 2014, to over 3.5 between August 2015 and January this year, many of them from commercial passenger aircraft. In the most serious incident, the pilot of an American Airlines jet last September had to swerve to avoid a drone. On September 13, flight 475 took off from Atlanta, Georgia en route to Charlotte, North Carolina. It was climbing to 3,500 ft when the pilot of the Airbus had to take evasive action to avoid a collision with an unidentified unmanned aerial system (UAS) or drone.

A drone has successfully delivered a package to a residential location in a Nevada town in what its maker and the state's governor said on Friday was the first fully autonomous urban drone delivery in the US. Matt Sweeney, chief executive of drone-maker Flirtey, said the six-rotor drone flew about a half-mile along a programmed delivery route on 10 March, then lowered the package outside a vacant residence in Hawthorne. The route was established using GPS. A pilot and visual observers were on standby during the flight but were not needed, Sweeney said. He said the package included bottled water, food and a first-aid kit.

A drone has successfully delivered a package to a residential location in a small Nevada town in what its maker and the governor of the state said Friday was the first fully autonomous urban drone delivery in the U.S. Flirtey CEO Matt Sweeney said the six-rotor drone flew about a half-mile along a pre-programmed delivery route on March 10 and lowered the package outside a vacant residence in an uninhabited area of Hawthorne, southeast of Reno. The route was established using GPS. A pilot and visual observers were on standby during the flight but weren't needed, Sweeney said. He said the package included bottled water, food and a first-aid kit. "Conducting the first drone delivery in an urban setting is a major achievement, taking us closer to the day that drones make regular deliveries to your front doorstep," Sweeney said.

The District of Columbia is infamous for some of the political issues that make it distinct from other areas of the country. Its residents only have a non-voting delegate in Congress, for example. And its crippled subway system is uniquely hobbled by the fact that it relies on money from Maryland and Virginia, not just funding from riders and D.C.'s government. So it's no surprise to learn that not long from now, D.C. residents may be able to add drone delivery to their "left out on" list. Many online shoppers are waiting eagerly for the day that they'll be able to order something on Amazon.com and have it dropped off, via drone, on their front stoop.

The Federal Aviation Administration is predicting a bright future for the growth of the commercial and hobbyist drone industries after final regulations are approved. In an aerospace forecast report released Thursday, the FAA said unmanned aircraft systems will be the "most dynamic growth sector within aviation." It noted that venture capitalists have already sunk "considerable" funds into the industry in hopes of building early market share. Already, the FAA predicted that 1.9 million hobbyist drones will be sold this year, along with more than 600,000 commercial drones. The FAA predicts that 4.3 million hobbyist drones could be sold per year by 2020.

While it looks nothing more than an unassuming quadcopter, Stanford's SCAMP (Stanford Climbing and Aerial Maneuvering Platform) has a lot more tricks up it sleeve--this drone can not only fly, it can also perch, and climb on walls. SCAMP basically takes everything the Biomimetics and Dexterous Manipulation Lab has learned from previous projects, such as the Stickybot (which mimics the gecko's wall climbing capability), to create this new drone. The team modified the climbing technology applied on the Stickybot so that SCAMP could climb faster. To achieve SCAMP's current maneuverability, they ensured it could take longer steps and added microspines to its feet--similar to what a praying mantis has. To achieve its ability to perch, the climbing mechanism for the machine was placed on top of the quadrotor, which allows it to press against surfaces for better stability.