Major Japanese and Chinese e-commerce companies Rakuten Inc. and JD.com Inc. said Thursday they will tie up and commercialize an unmanned delivery service in Japan to save the time, cost and labor involved in parcel shipments in the wake of the explosive growth of online shopping. Rakuten will employ JD.com's drones and unmanned ground vehicles, which the Chinese firm already operates in commercial services in its home country, as it prepares to introduce autonomous delivery in Japan. The Tokyo-based firm has been conducting experiments and trial services of autonomous parcel delivery since 2016, seeing it as an effective solution to the "last mile" issue of cutting the time and cost of shipping packages from transportation hubs to consumers' doors. JD.com, also known as Jingdong, launched the world's first commercial drone delivery in 2016 in China and is aiming to expand its service abroad. JD.com Vice President Xiao Jun said there are "many opportunities" in Japan for drone deliveries in mountainous areas and remote islands.

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar – A French national has appeared in court in Myanmar after being arrested two weeks ago for allegedly flying a drone close to the country's vast parliament complex. Arthur Desclaux faces a charge under the Illegal Export-Import Act and could be jailed for up to three years if convicted. He was driven into the court compound in the back of a police vehicle, past waiting media. A French consular official told reporters outside the court Friday that Desclaux said he had been well-treated, but expressed disappointment that the 27-year-old was still kept in custody. Frederic Inza says: "We regret he is still in prison.

Earlier this year six Amazon Scout delivery robots rolled out in a pilot program in Snohomish County, Wash. The boxy bots, which resemble six-wheeled ice chests, carry meals, groceries and packages to homes and offices in this region just north of Seattle. They join a small-but-growing number of automated couriers trundling down the sidewalks of London, Beijing and other cities and communities worldwide. These machines must run a gauntlet of pedestrian legs, nosy dogs and cracked pavement. Which raises the question: Why are companies investing in delivery bots at all?

First responders will be able to use drones equipped with Augmented Reality technology to better deal with emergency situations. Drones have been getting a really bad rep of late, specially in the United Kingdom, after rogue operators managed to shut down operations at both Gatwick and Heathrow airports, effectively ruining Christmas for thousands of travellers and prompting widespread clamour for greater regulation against them. Yet like all technology, it's not the tech itself, but what you do with it that counts, and which makes it a force for evil – or for the greater good. The other side of all the fear and annoyance that drones can cause in the wrong hands are the life-saving applications that companies like Edgybees are working on. Edgybees was initially founded as AR video game enhancement software, then pivoted to specialize in rescue drone technology that collects geospatial data and overlays information onto video feeds to bring emergency responders accurate and real-time information.

Being buried alive is a scenario most of us thankfully only experience in nightmares. But for off-piste skiing fans, lured by the thrill of carving their own tracks through fresh powder snow, it's an ever-present risk. More than 150 people - mostly skiers, snowboarders and snowmobilers - are killed in avalanches every year, according to National Geographic statistics. This month alone, there have been deaths in Switzerland, Italy, Canada and North America. Drone manufacturers claim UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) could slash the toll by finding victims faster, and allowing ski patrollers to clear snow on high-risk slopes using explosives - without endangering themselves.

Riga, Latvia – February 21, 2019 – The new automatic Facade Scan tool of UgCS for drone inspection mission planning is a time and cost saver for construction, engineering and mining industries. Various tools for surveying horizontal surfaces, even the uneven ones, have been developed to a high standard and are widely available on the market. Inspecting vertical surfaces is a completely different story -- previously it required a lot of manual work and so was a burden for professional drone users. But now, with the automatic Facade Scan tool from UgCS, this has changed. Making accurate digital models of buildings or cultural heritage objects, and finding heat leaks or damage to walls: these are some of the applications of the new Facade Scan tool for construction and architecture.

Major Japanese and Chinese e-commerce companies Rakuten Inc. and JD.com Inc. said Thursday they will tie up and commercialize an unmanned delivery service in Japan to save time, cost and labor of parcel shipments in the wake of the explosive growth of online shopping. Rakuten will employ drones and unmanned ground vehicles of JD.com, which already operates them in commercial services in China, as it prepares to introduce autonomous delivery in Japan. The Tokyo-based firm has been conducting experiments and trial services of autonomous parcel delivery since 2016, seeing it as an effective solution to the "last mile" issue of cutting the time and cost of shipping packages from transportation hubs to consumers' doors. JD.com, also known as Jingdong, launched the world's first commercial drone delivery in 2016 in China and is aiming to expand its service abroad. JD.com Vice President Xiao Jun said there are "many opportunities" in Japan for drone deliveries in mountainous areas and remote islands.

After years of promises about a physical wall stretching along the United States-Mexico border, president Donald Trump declared a state of emergency last week in an attempt to secure wall funding in spite of Congressional opposition. But physical barriers alone have always been both ineffective and expensive. And the constant debate around that singular aspect has distracted from a much more pressing issue: how the US can expand its use of technology for screening and enforcement at the border without overstepping already strained privacy rights. Border security technologies, like surveillance drones and biometric identity schemes, received funding in Congress's most recent spending bill as an alternative to Trump's physical wall. But privacy advocates have long argued that a "smart wall," often called a "smart fence," can pose real threats to human rights not just at checkpoints and processing facilities, but for anyone within the 100-mile-wide "border zone" in which US Customs and Border Protection has jurisdiction. "The way that this debate has been weaponized has really shut down a big portion of the conversation that we should be having," says Evan Greer, deputy director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future.

[The drone pilot] knew the blind spots for it, where it could not be'hit',

SEATTLE (The Borowitz Report)--Amazon drones stand "ready and waiting" to deliver copies of Robert Mueller's official report, free of charge, to every American household as early as next week, the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, confirmed on Wednesday. According to Bezos, Amazon has been planning the Mueller delivery mission for months, quietly building its drone fleet from a meagre two hundred to well over three million. "Amazon will be doing same-day delivery of Mueller's report the day it is released, free of charge, to both Prime and non-Prime households," Bezos said. "This is our way of giving something back." News of the offer sent the Mueller report zooming to No. 1 on Amazon's best-seller list within minutes.