The Animal Legal Defense Fund announced Thursday a reward of $5,000 for information on the person or people who operated a drone that crashed-landed in May into nesting grounds at the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve in Huntington Beach. About 3,000 elegant terns -- notable for their orange bills and black crests -- fled the reserve after the crash in mid-May. They left behind 1,500 to 2,000 unsavable eggs, the largest abandonment that scientists who work there could remember. The operators of drones that fly over state wildlife preserves and disturb habitats can face charges for nest destruction and harassment of wildlife, according to Officer Nick Molsberry of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Tim Daly, a spokesperson for the agency, said that he had no knowledge of the drone operator in the Bolsa Chica incident having been identified or of the birds having returned to the reserve, which spans more than 1,000 acres.

Editors Note: This article was originally published in Robot Report, a sister publication to Robotics Business Review. Qualcomm has been a pioneer in wireless telecommunications for 30-plus years. To maintain its spirit of innovation, the San Diego-based company now spends approximately $5 billion per year on R&D. Under the stewardship of Dev Singh the last four years, Qualcomm has made major in-roads with the robotics development community. But today it took another major step in hopes of becoming the de facto development platform for robotics companies.

In the popular Terminator movies, a relentless super-robot played by Arnold Schwarzenegger tracks and attempts to kill human targets. It was pure science fiction in the 1980s. Today, killer robots hunting down targets have not only become reality, but are sold and deployed on the field of battle. The new Turkish-made Kargu-2 quadcopter drone can allegedly autonomously track and kill human targets on the basis of facial recognition and artificial intelligence--a big technological leap from the drone fleets requiring remote control by human operators. A United Nations Security Council report claims the Kargu-2 was used in Libya to mount autonomous attacks on human targets.

Grubhub is teaming up with Russian tech giant Yandex to deliver food to students and others on US college campuses with the help of autonomous robots. The companies have agreed a multi-year partnership, and the robots will start dropping off orders on select campuses this fall. Grubhub works with more than 250 colleges across the country. Yandex says its robots can access areas and navigate obstacles that cars cannot. It will be able to deliver food in mainly pedestrian areas and the robot delivery service will be integrated into Grubhub's app.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. A drone struck in the "vicinity" of the Erbil air base where U.S. troops are housed in the northern region of Iraq Tuesday, but no injuries or structural damage have been reported, according to Pentagon officials. "We are aware of reporting of a UAS [unmanned aircraft system] incident in the vicinity of Erbil, Iraq," Pentagon Spokesperson Commander Jessica McNulty told Fox News. "At this time, initial reports indicate no structural damage, injuries or casualties."

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. Israel reportedly used a swarm of drones to locate and attack Hamas targets during the 11 day conflict that broke out in May. The Israeli Defense Forces employed artificial intelligence to identify and strike targets in the Gaza Strip, according to a report from the New Scientist, which alleged it may be the first time a drone swarm has been used in combat. Drone swarms have been characterized as the next phase of war fighting, whereby "hundreds of drones that integrate their actions using emergent behavior."

Drones have exploded in popularity, but their range often leaves something to be desired. Midrange drones can reach as far as 1.5 miles, while high-end consumer drones can go as far as 4.5 miles away. Distance has been the limit to true freedom -- until now. The new Parrot Anafi Ai drone uses 4G connectivity to eliminate any and all range restrictions. You can precisely control the drone from any distance, no line of sight is required, and obstacles won't interfere with the connection.

European drone company Parrot is releasing a new drone, the Anafi AI, in the second half of 2021. Notably, it's the first to use 4G as a main data link between the drone and remote--effectively doing away with transmission limitations. It can also use a Wi-Fi connection. Parrot claims remote pilots can operate the drone Beyond Visual Line of Sight (if permission is obtained) and it won't lose connection behind obstacles such as trees or buildings. A camera with a 48MP 1/2" Quad Bayer sensor, 24mm lens, a fixed F2.0 aperture and 73º FOV is affixed to a 6-axis (3-axis mechanical, 3-axis electronic) stabilized gimbal. Parrot says that the camera offers the same precision as a drone with a 1"-type 20MP CMOS sensor while flying 1.5 times higher.

The work presented in this paper demonstrates our approach to intercepting a faster intruder UAV, inspired by the MBZIRC2020 Challenge 1. By leveraging the knowledge of the shape of the intruder's trajectory we are able to calculate the interception point. Target tracking is based on image processing by a YOLOv3 Tiny convolutional neural network, combined with depth calculation using a gimbal-mounted ZED Mini stereo camera. We use RGB and depth data from ZED Mini to extract the 3D position of the target, for which we devise a histogram-of-depth based processing to reduce noise. Obtained 3D measurements of target's position are used to calculate the position, the orientation and the size of a figure-eight shaped trajectory, which we approximate using lemniscate of Bernoulli. Once the approximation is deemed sufficiently precise, measured by Hausdorff distance between measurements and the approximation, an interception point is calculated to position the intercepting UAV right on the path of the target. The proposed method, which has been significantly improved based on the experience gathered during the MBZIRC competition, has been validated in simulation and through field experiments. The results confirmed that an efficient visual perception module which extracts information related to the motion of the target UAV as a basis for the interception, has been developed. The system is able to track and intercept the target which is 30% faster than the interceptor in majority of simulation experiments. Tests in the unstructured environment yielded 9 out of 12 successful results.

Texas A&M's Robin Murphy has deployed robots at 29 disasters, including three building collapses, two mine disasters and an earthquake as director of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue. She has also served as a technical search specialist with the Hillsboro County (Florida) Fire and Rescue Department. The Conversation talked to Murphy to provide readers an understanding of the types of technologies that search and rescue crews at the Champlain Towers South disaster site in Surfside, Florida, have at their disposal, as well as some they don't. The interview has been edited for length. We don't have reports about it from Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department, but news coverage shows that they're using drones.