As 5G connectivity rolls out across the country in fits and starts, we're still asking whether the upgrades will make for a noticeable change in our wireless connectivity. During a CES keynote, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg (Verizon owns Engadget's parent company) tried to make the case that 5G is "the platform that makes other innovations possible." Verizon announced a deal between its subsidiary, Skyward and UPS Flight Forward to team up on delivery drones that use 4G LTE at first, and include testing with 5G connections later this year. In a statement, UPS CEO Carol B. Tomé said 5G will be necessary to do these kinds of deliveries at scale. Other deals include Live Nation and the NFL.

Sony Corp. unveiled its Airpeak drone at CES, the world's largest consumer electronics and information technology show, which opened over the internet Monday. The 2021 Consumer Electronics Show, which is scheduled to run through Thursday, aims to create connections and showcase the latest in robotics, smart devices, digital health and more. Some 1,800 exhibitors are participating in the show, forced to go online by the coronavirus pandemic. Airpeak marks Sony's entry into the drone business. It can wield Sony's Alpha mirrorless cameras and is expected to allow creators to shoot high-definition aerial videos.

The Defense Ministry will begin research on ways to ward off drone attacks by using vehicle-mounted laser, according to informed sources. By mounting laser equipment on vehicles, the ministry aims to raise the mobility of the system. The ministry included ¥2.8 billion in research spending in its budget for fiscal 2021. It aims to establish related technology as early as fiscal 2024 and put it into practical use at an early date. In fiscal 2018, the ministry started research on using high-energy laser to destroy drones.

Drones have always been a high-flying success at the annual CES show. The latest drone with a buzz: Sony's Airpeak drone, which promises to be an eye-in-the-sky for filmmakers. Sony did not offer a lot of information about the drone, but showed a video of it – outfitted with a Sony Alpha 7S III camera – tracking the electronics company's in-development Vision-S electric high-tech vehicle from above. Captured was stunning footage of the snowy, wooded mountainous Austrian landscape. The Airpeak, Sony says, is the smallest class of drones that can carry such a camera.

Just two months after announcing the Airpeak in a vague press release and equally mysterious video, Sony has shown off its new drone in a virtual CES 2021 presentation. The Airpeak supports Sony's Alpha series of mirrorless cameras and uses AI to keep images steady as it flies through the sky. Sony's drone is designed for "adventurous creators," according to company president and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida. It has four rotors, two landing arms that lift with takeoff, and it all looks mighty sleek in action. The Airpeak will launch in the spring at an undisclosed price point.

Mr. Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday banning transactions with eight Chinese software applications, including Alipay. It was the latest escalation of the president's economic war with China. Details and the start of the ban will fall to Mr. Biden, who could decide not to follow through on the idea. Separately, the Trump administration has also banned the import of some cotton from the Xinjiang region, where China has detained vast numbers of people who are members of ethnic minorities and forced them to work in fields and factories. In another move, the administration prohibited several Chinese companies, including the chip maker SMIC and the drone maker DJI, from buying American products.

Since the dawn of the drone era, enterprising pilots and enthusiasts have found ways to make money off their passion for flying. Thanks to a new partnership between the Drone Racing League and DraftKings, though, gamblers can now make money off of other people's passion for flying. While DraftKings can legally operate its daily fantasy sports business in 43 states, the company stresses that betting on drone races is currently only legal in Colorado, New Hampshire, West Virginia, Tennessee and New Jersey. "The sky is now the limit for DRL fans to get skin in the game, and we're thrilled to partner with DraftKings to transform our high-speed race competition into the ultimate sport to bet on," said DRL President Rachel Jacobson in a press release. Today's announcement makes drone racing the first aerial sport people can legally bet on, and Jacobson noted to Forbes that embracing betting is part of the company's plan to scale into an "ultimately mainstream sport."

As an emerging technique, mobile edge computing (MEC) introduces a new processing scheme for various distributed communication-computing systems such as industrial Internet of Things (IoT), vehicular communication, smart city, etc. In this work, we mainly focus on the timeliness of the MEC systems where the freshness of the data and computation tasks is significant. Firstly, we formulate a kind of age-sensitive MEC models and define the average age of information (AoI) minimization problems of interests. Then, a novel policy based multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (RL) framework, called heterogeneous multi-agent actor critic (H-MAAC), is proposed as a paradigm for joint collaboration in the investigated MEC systems, where edge devices and center controller learn the interactive strategies through their own observations. To improves the system performance, we develop the corresponding online algorithm by introducing an edge federated learning mode into the multi-agent cooperation whose advantages on learning convergence can be guaranteed theoretically. To the best of our knowledge, it's the first joint MEC collaboration algorithm that combines the edge federated mode with the multi-agent actor-critic reinforcement learning. Furthermore, we evaluate the proposed approach and compare it with classical RL based methods. As a result, the proposed framework not only outperforms the baseline on average system age, but also promotes the stability of training process. Besides, the simulation results provide some innovative perspectives for the system design under the edge federated collaboration.

In addition to cleaning, sanitizing and setting up COVID-19 testing stations, airports are responding to the coronavirus pandemic by finding ways to make the journey through the terminal touch-free. Before the pandemic, contactless services would have been presented as convenient amenities for travelers. Today, however, they have become an important part of the tool kit for keeping passengers safe, healthy and confident enough to travel. From touchless airport parking to check-in, bag drop and even robot food delivery, here are some of the ways – and places – your airport experience might be different during your next trip. CDC advises COVID-19 tests for travel:8 do's and don'ts ahead of your trip Before the pandemic, some airports offered travelers the option to reserve and prepay for parking online.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. The Navy is getting into drones in a big way, with new plans to add 21 unmanned surface and underwater vessels over the next five years. The Navy just released its 30-year shipbuilding plan, which reflects a growing emphasis on the use of drones in maritime combat. Between now and 2026, the Navy aims to acquire 12 large unmanned surface vessels, one medium unmanned surface vessel and 8 extra-large unmanned underwater vessels, according to the plan.