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Search for survivors after Russian drone and missile barrage hits Kyiv

Al Jazeera

A Russian air attack on Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, killed at least five people and wounded others, according to Ukraine's emergency services. Drones and missiles hit residential areas, hospitals and sport infrastructure in numerous districts across Kyiv in the early hours of Monday, officials said. The most severe damage took place in the Shevchenkivskyi district, where one section of a five-storey block of flats collapsed. Five people were confirmed killed in the attack on the building, while 10 others, including a pregnant woman, have been rescued from a nearby tower block that also sustained heavy damage. Elsewhere in Ukraine, another person was killed and eight injured in the city of Bila Tserkva, some 85km (53 miles) southwest of the capital.


ASAP-MO:Advanced Situational Awareness and Perception for Mission-critical Operations

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Deploying robotic missions can be challenging due to the complexity of controlling robots with multiple degrees of freedom, fusing diverse sensory inputs, and managing communication delays and interferences. In nuclear inspection, robots can be crucial in assessing environments where human presence is limited, requiring precise teleoperation and coordination. Teleoperation requires extensive training, as operators must process multiple outputs while ensuring safe interaction with critical assets. These challenges are amplified when operating a fleet of heterogeneous robots across multiple environments, as each robot may have distinct control interfaces, sensory systems, and operational constraints. Efficient coordination in such settings remains an open problem. This paper presents a field report on how we integrated robot fleet capabilities - including mapping, localization, and telecommunication - toward a joint mission. We simulated a nuclear inspection scenario for exposed areas, using lights to represent a radiation source. We deployed two Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) tasked with mapping indoor and outdoor environments while remotely controlled from a single base station. Despite having distinct operational goals, the robots produced a unified map output, demonstrating the feasibility of coordinated multi-robot missions. Our results highlight key operational challenges and provide insights into improving adaptability and situational awareness in remote robotic deployments.


Israel says it killed Iran's military coordinator with Hamas

BBC News

The IDF said it had killed Izadi in a strike on an apartment in Qom, south of Tehran, in the early hours of Saturday. He had been in charge of the Palestine Corps of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps's (IRGC) Quds Force, responsible for handling ties with the Palestinian armed groups. He was reportedly instrumental in arming and financing Hamas, and had been responsible for military co-ordination between senior IRGC commanders and Hamas leaders, the IDF said. In April 2024, Izadi narrowly survived an Israeli air strike targeting the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria - an attack that killed several high-ranking Quds Force commanders. Israel later on Saturday also claimed to have killed another Quds Force commander, Behnam Shahriyari in a drone strike as he was travelling in a car through western Iran.


Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,212

Al Jazeera

At least 14 people were injured when Russian drones attacked the Ukrainian Black Sea city of Odesa overnight, damaging high-rise buildings and railway infrastructure, Ukrainian authorities said.


Fox Nation reveals never-before-seen footage from Trump assassination attempt in Butler

FOX News

'The Art of the Surge' is available to stream on Fox Nation, taking viewers behind the scenes of President Donald Trump's campaign and road back to the White House. President Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign took a deadly turn when an assassin made an attempt on his life during a July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Now, Fox Nation subscribers can uncover new, previously unreleased footage from the shocking event. As shown on Wednesday's edition of "Fox & Friends," new drone footage featured in Fox Nation's "Art of the Surge: The Donald Trump Comeback" captures the scene of the Butler rally, as well as close-up footage of the Secret Service protecting Trump after shots rang out. Also shown are shocking videos of the crowd's reaction as everything unfolded, highlighting the fear of those who were there that day.


No more fireworks? Big change coming to 4th of July at Pasadena's Rose Bowl

Los Angeles Times

Marking the end of a longtime tradition, the Fourth of July celebration at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena will not feature a fireworks show this year. Instead, there will be a drone show. The move comes as some venues have switched from fireworks to drone shows -- in which a fleet of drones performs a choreographed light show -- to celebrate the 4th of July. But drone shows have fallen flat for some. Notably Redondo Beach and Laguna Beach switched back to fireworks after trying out drone shows, and some promoters of fireworks shows have voiced criticism over efforts to transition to drone shows.


SurfAAV: Design and Implementation of a Novel Multimodal Surfing Aquatic-Aerial Vehicle

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Despite significant advancements in the research of aquatic-aerial robots, existing configurations struggle to efficiently perform underwater, surface, and aerial movement simultaneously. In this paper, we propose a novel multimodal surfing aquatic-aerial vehicle, SurfAA V, which efficiently integrates underwater navigation, surface gliding, and aerial flying capabilities. Thanks to the design of the novel differential thrust vectoring hydrofoil, SurfAA V can achieve efficient surface gliding and underwater navigation without the need for a buoyancy adjustment system. This design provides flexible operational capabilities for both surface and underwater tasks, enabling the robot to quickly carry out underwater monitoring activities. Additionally, when it is necessary to reach another water body, SurfAA V can switch to aerial mode through a gliding takeoff, flying to the target water area to perform corresponding tasks. The main contribution of this letter lies in proposing a new solution for underwater, surface, and aerial movement, designing a novel hybrid prototype concept, developing the required control laws, and validating the robot's ability to successfully perform surface gliding and gliding takeoff. SurfAA V achieves a maximum surface gliding speed of 7.96 m/s and a maximum underwater speed of 3.1 m/s. The prototype's surface gliding maneuverability and underwater cruising maneuverability both exceed those of existing aquatic-aerial vehicles. N recent years, with the rapid development of robotics technology, unmanned aquatic-aerial vehicles(UAA Vs) capable of adapting to complex environments and performing diversified tasks have gradually become a research hotspot. These robots integrate the advantages of both autonomous underwater vehicles(AUVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles(UA Vs), allowing them to freely switch between motion modes in water and air. This capability greatly broadens the application scope of traditional robots, demonstrating enormous potential in multi-domain missions such as environmental monitoring[1], disaster rescue[2], and national defense[3].


Offensive Robot Cybersecurity

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Offensive Robot Cybersecurity introduces a groundbreaking approach by advocating for offensive security methods empowered by means of automation. It emphasizes the necessity of understanding attackers' tactics and identifying vulnerabilities in advance to develop effective defenses, thereby improving robots' security posture. This thesis leverages a decade of robotics experience, employing Machine Learning and Game Theory to streamline the vulnerability identification and exploitation process. Intrinsically, the thesis uncovers a profound connection between robotic architecture and cybersecurity, highlighting that the design and creation aspect of robotics deeply intertwines with its protection against attacks. This duality -- whereby the architecture that shapes robot behavior and capabilities also necessitates a defense mechanism through offensive and defensive cybersecurity strategies -- creates a unique equilibrium. Approaching cybersecurity with a dual perspective of defense and attack, rooted in an understanding of systems architecture, has been pivotal. Through comprehensive analysis, including ethical considerations, the development of security tools, and executing cyber attacks on robot software, hardware, and industry deployments, this thesis proposes a novel architecture for cybersecurity cognitive engines. These engines, powered by advanced game theory and machine learning, pave the way for autonomous offensive cybersecurity strategies for robots, marking a significant shift towards self-defending robotic systems. This research not only underscores the importance of offensive measures in enhancing robot cybersecurity but also sets the stage for future advancements where robots are not just resilient to cyber threats but are equipped to autonomously safeguard themselves.


Towards Perception-based Collision Avoidance for UAVs when Guiding the Visually Impaired

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Autonomous navigation by drones using onboard sensors combined with machine learning and computer vision algorithms is impacting a number of domains, including agriculture, logistics, and disaster management. In this paper, we examine the use of drones for assisting visually impaired people (VIPs) in navigating through outdoor urban environments. Specifically, we present a perception-based path planning system for local planning around the neighborhood of the VIP, integrated with a global planner based on GPS and maps for coarse planning. We represent the problem using a geometric formulation and propose a multi DNN based framework for obstacle avoidance of the UAV as well as the VIP. Our evaluations conducted on a drone human system in a university campus environment verifies the feasibility of our algorithms in three scenarios; when the VIP walks on a footpath, near parked vehicles, and in a crowded street.


Senators Ricketts, Fetterman unite against China's quiet invasion of US farmland

FOX News

Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., spoke with Fox News Digital about his bipartisan bill to codify oversight of foreign adversaries, including China, buying American farmland. EXCLUSIVE: Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts is leading the charge with Democrat Sen. John Fetterman to codify oversight on foreign countries buying American farmland. The bipartisan Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure (AFIDA) Improvements Act seeks to implement recommendations published by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in January 2024, which found the AFIDA was ill-equipped to combat foreign ownership of American agricultural land. "Communist China is our greatest geopolitical threat," Ricketts told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview, adding, "This is a way for us to improve the disclosure that's going on with regard to the purchase of this agricultural land, so we can take other action if necessary to make sure we're not giving Communist China the opportunity to buy agricultural land." The bill's proposal comes as two Chinese nationals – a University of Michigan post-doctoral research fellow, Yunqing Jian, and Huazhong University of Science and Technology student Chengxuan Han – were held in federal custody after they were accused of smuggling biological materials into the United States.