A drone with a machine gun attached can hit targets with high precision, according to its makers. Turkey is set to become the first country to have the drone, when it gets a delivery this month. The 25-kilogram drone has eight rotating blades to get it in the air. Its machine gun carries 200 rounds of ammunition and can fire single shots or 15-round bursts. Many countries and groups already use small military drones that can drop grenades or fly into a target to detonate an explosive.

In its 4 year existence the Israeli start-up Taranis has seen huge growth. Taranis started as a tool to provide farmers with the information to detect and prevent crop disease, weeds and insect damage based on weather forecasts gathered from aerial surveillance. The technology was then further developed by adding visual layers from satellites, planes and drones and leveraged with AI capabilities. Taranis also created a one-of-a-kind, patented hardware that can capture accurate images at a high resolution from a plane flying at 160 km/h, such as a specific insect on a leaf from 200 feet above ground. Taranis CEO Ofir Schlam says the future of the precision farming industry is looking bright, with thousands of start-ups emerging within the last 10 years. According to him, smart farming is projected to create a massive impact on the agricultural economy in the near future and will be dependent on precision technologies, such as the adoption of automated practices and indoor urbanised farming.

Artificial intelligence in autonomous systems (i.e., drones) can address human error and fatigue issues, but also, in the future, concerns over ethical behaviour on the battlefield. Installing an algorithmic "moral compass" in AI, however, will be challenging. A common theme among many discussions concerning the military uses of artificial intelligence (AI) is the "Skynet" trope: the fear that AI will be self-aware and decide to turn on its masters. Inherent in this argument is the contention that AI does not share the same ethical constraints that humans do. While almost certainly an over-exaggeration, the Skynet scenario does highlight the problem of ensuring that the ethical behaviour we believe is incumbent on humans in combat is not lost as we increasingly devolve battlefield decision-making to autonomous systems.

Team MAVLab received a $1 million cash prize for winning the 2019 Artificial Intelligence Robotic Racing Championship. Team MAVLab, the drone research lab of the Delft University of Technology, won a $1 million cash prize as the leading AlphaPilot team of the 2019 Artificial Intelligence Robotic Racing Circuit, the autonomous drone racing series that accelerates AI innovation through futuristic sports competition. The winning team was announced by Lockheed Martin and The Drone Racing League (DRL), the professional drone racing circuit, following the AIRR Championship, which took place Friday (December 6) at the Austin American-Statesman in Austin, Texas. Lockheed Martin sponsored the $1 million cash prize. The AIRR Championship marked the final race of a four-event series that aims to advance the development and testing of fully autonomous drone technologies for real-world applications including disaster relief, search and rescue missions, and space exploration.

Flight records and related materials from police drone programs have been uncovered following a security breach at DroneSense, which provides services to a number of private corporations and government agencies. The records included flight paths, pilot names and email addresses, and operation names from more than 200 different drone flights, offering insight into how police use drones in day to day law enforcement. The records come from drone operations at the Atlanta Police Department, Nassau County Police Department, and others. The files also included information from other DroneSense clients, including Boise Fire Department, City of Coral Springs, and the US Army Corps of Engineers. According to a report in Vice, the records show a number of different police drone operations, including the Atlanta police using a drone to surveil an apartment complex and nearby parking lot.

There are over 35 million households in the US with dogs and backyards, and it may be safe to say that not one of them enjoys cleaning up their pet's mess. A firm has designed a robot that finds, detects and automatically scoops up what your canine friend left behind. Called Beetl, this machine is equip with computer vision and front cameras to hunt down dog poop. Once the robot spots feces within your yard, it moves directly over it and uses a mechanical claw as a scoop. And the robot holds it in a sealed container for disposal. Bettl's sensors not only help it detect a mess, but also avoid obstacles and stay within a perimeter.

While AIs are increasingly beating us mere mortals at many things, racing drones is something we still have the upper hand at. The Drone Racing League (DRL) orchestrated its first AI racing competitions this year, with the final of a four-part series held in Texas earlier this month. The races aim to advance the development and testing of fully autonomous drone technologies for real-world applications including disaster relief, search and rescue missions, and space exploration. The DRL RacerAI is the first autonomous drone designed to defeat a human in a physical sport. The drone features the NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier AI-at-the-edge compute platform in addition to four onboard stereoscopic cameras which enable the AI to detect and identify objects with twice the field of view as human pilots.

Fox News Flash top headlines for Dec. 10 are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com A Wisconsin state trooper used a drone to find a dog and reunite it with its injured owner following a vehicle crash last week, officials said. Trooper John Jones used his drone to locate River, a 3-year-old Australian Shepherd, in a wooded area in Brown County. The dog and a driver were traveling on State Highway 57 on Friday when a deer darted onto the road, causing the unidentified driver to swerve and crash into a median, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (DOT) said.

On Friday night in an old newspaper printing plant in Austin, the future of drone automation lifted off, accelerated and flew, nearly fast enough to beat one of the best drone pilots in the world. Gabriel Kocher, known in the professional Drone Racing League as Gab707, sat behind a net, wearing video goggles and steering his drone through five square gates on a short, curvy course. Next to him were four teammates from the MavLAB of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. They had already programmed their automated drone, which resembled a mini Stealth Bomber. Now they were watching to see if their code had made the drone fast and accurate enough to defeat Kocher.

According to the Google leadership, the company will not renew its Project Maven contract when it expires in 2019. Project Maven is the company's involvement with the U.S. military which involves the use of Artificial Intelligence to detect and identify people or objects in military drone surveillance videos. Many of the employees at Google were upset and 3,000 of them signed a petition voicing their concerns of Google's involvement with the military which could in turn be harmful for Google. They were against the development of image recognition technology which could be used by military drones to identify and track objects. It was reported on June 1 by Gizmodo that the company would not renew the Project Maven contract after June 2019.