Washington – The United States added dozens of Chinese companies, including the country's top chipmaker SMIC and Chinese drone manufacturer SZ DJI Technology Co. Ltd., to a trade blacklist on Friday as U.S. President Donald Trump's administration ratchets up tensions with China in his final weeks in office. Reuters first reported the addition of SMIC and other companies earlier on Friday. The move is seen as the latest in Republican Trump's efforts to burnish his tough-on-China image as part of lengthy fight between Washington and Beijing over trade and numerous economic issues. The U.S. Commerce Department said the action against SMIC stems from Beijing's efforts to harness civilian technologies for military purposes and evidence of activities between SMIC and Chinese military industrial companies of concern. The Commerce Department will "not allow advanced U.S. technology to help build the military of an increasingly belligerent adversary," Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement.

Iran's supreme leader and the country's president both warned America on Wednesday that the departure of President Donald Trump does not immediately mean better relations between the two nations. The remarks come as Iran approaches the first anniversary of the U.S. drone strike that killed Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad, an attack that nearly plunged Washington and Tehran into an open war after months of tensions. In recent weeks, a scientist who founded Iran's military nuclear program two decades ago was gunned down in an attack in a rural area outside of Tehran that The Associated Press accessed for the first time Wednesday. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke in Tehran at the Imam Khomeini Hosseinieh, or congregation hall, where he attended a meeting with Soleimani's family and top military leaders. They all sat some 16 feet away from the 81-year-old Khamenei, who wore a face mask due to the coronavirus pandemic still raging in Iran.

One of the world's most endangered whales was spotted swimming with a newborn in the waters off South Carolina's Hilton Head island. A drone camera captured footage of a 50-ton North Atlantic right whale and her calf frolicking about four miles from shore. According to the boat captain who spotted the pair on Friday, the mother was 50 feet long and the calf was close to 15 feet. The North Atlantic right whale is among the rarest of marine mammals, with less than 400 left in the world. Collisions with boats and entanglement in lobster nets are the main reason they are critically endangered.

Despite a growing population, now predicted to reach 9.6 billion by 2050, the agriculture industry must rise to meet demand, regardless of environmental challenges like unfavorable weather conditions and climate change. To meet the needs of that growing population, the agriculture industry will have to adopt new technologies to gain a much-needed edge. New agricultural applications in smart farming and precision farming through IoT will enable the industry to increase operational efficiency, lower costs, reduce waste, and improve the quality of their yield. So, what is smart farming? Smart farming is a capital-intensive and hi-tech system of growing food cleanly and sustainable for the masses.

Sometimes, like a total eclipse, my two great passions--technology and reality TV--become one. It happened in November 2017, when, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I cajoled then-Future Tense contributor Jacob Brogan into writing about the previous night's Teen Mom 2 episode. It grappled with a critical question: Is it OK to shoot down a drone flying above private property? The segment in question begins as (former) teen mom Jenelle prepares for her wedding to David, a very cool and normal dude who we will return to in a moment. David, stalking the property like an ornery bison, calls Jenelle, informing her that "some girls" were attempting to take pictures of the event before it began.

Smellicopter is a tiny drone developed by scientists at the University of Washington, capable of detecting smells like gas leaks, explosives, or even the survivors of a natural disaster. This amazing, obstacle avoiding UAV doesn't use a man-made sensor to smell: it uses a moth antenna to navigate towards an odor. A research paper published in IOP Science describes Smellicopter as "A bio-hybrid odor-guided autonomous palm-sized air vehicle." The advantages to such a vehicle are clear: the tiny drone can travel in places that humans cannot or should not: the rubble of buildings after a natural disaster; zones where chemical leaks or spills may have occurred; or conflict zones that may contain chemical or explosive weapons. The truly unique aspect of this amazing little drone is the use of a moth antenna: tiny, delicate, and amazingly sensitive.

BEGIN ARTICLE PREVIEW: Although robots and robotics have become hot topics in recent years, the actual robots that make it to the news aren’t exactly like the robots of Hollywood. Flying drones, delivery bots, concierge bots, and even waiter bots all share in the same basic nature but are quite far removed from the robots of imagination and fiction. Boston Dynamics is probably both famous and infamous for robots that almost induce nightmares and the company is reportedly being sold off to a car maker where its future robotics ventures remain unknown. It actually isn’t a surprise that Hyundai would be interested in robotics to the point of buying up a globally known company. In fact, almost all major car manufacturers these days have large investments in robotics. Most of those, however, revolve around industrial factory robots as well for assisted mobility. In contrast, Boston Dynamics, which traces its roots to MIT before a short stint as a Google company, cove

The Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center has awarded a $93.3 million contract to General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc (GA-ASI), makers of the MQ-9 Reaper, to equip the drone with new AI technology. The aim is for the Reaper to be able to carry out autonomous flight, decide where to direct its battery of sensors, and to recognize objects on the ground. The contract, announced at the end of last month, builds on a successful test earlier this year. In some ways this is not a major development, more of an incremental step using existing technology. What makes it significant is the drone that is being equipped, and what it will be able to do afterwards.

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) has demonstrated the DARPA-developed Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment (CODE) autonomy engine on the company's Avenger Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS). CODE was used in order to gain further understanding of cognitive Artificial Intelligence (AI) processing on larger UAS platforms for air-to-air targeting. Using a network-enabled Tactical Targeting Network Technology (TTNT) radio for mesh network mission communications, GA-ASI was able to demonstrate integration of emerging Advanced Tactical Data Links (ATDL), as well as separation between flight and mission critical systems. During the autonomous flight, CODE software controlled the manoeuvring of the Avenger UAS for over two hours without human pilot input. GA-ASI extended the base software behavioural functions for a coordinated air-to-air search with up to six aircraft, using five virtual aircraft for the purposes of the demonstration.

Humans might not have much involvement in mid-air refueling before long. Boeing has flown a test version of its MQ-25 tanker drone with a refueling pod attached for the first time, taking it one step closer to topping up military aircraft. The 2.5-hour flight showed that the autonomous drone's aerodynamics were sound with the wing-mounted pod it's expected to carry much of the time. The test drone, T1, is a precursor to an "engineering development" model that will take Boeing one step closer to a finished vehicle. This could be a crucial machine.