Spanish police have cracked down on a drug smuggling ring that was using drones to spy on law enforcement and make sure the coast was clear while they conducted their illicit business. Officers arrested 12 members of the ring, all Spanish nationals, who they attribute with trafficking over six tons of hashish into the country over the last few months, worth about $5.7 million. Hashish is a potent marijuana product that comes from the resin of the cannabis plant, and it is much stronger than the herbal drug. Police discovered a drone, radio frequency inhibitor and several smartphones during their raid, and deemed that the 10 men and two women associated with the operation were using the technology to monitor the coast of the southern town where they were arrested, La Linea de la Concepcion. "Some of those who were arrested were highly trained in the use of unmanned drones, which were used when a boat full of hashish neared the coast to land, in order to monitor a possible police presence," police said.

A startup funded by Microsoft owner Bill Gates is looking for permission to test a radar-powered drone detector system at the Superbowl this Sunday. Echodyne has filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) to experiment with the technology during the NFL's marquee event in Atlanta. It is capable of detecting drones up to 0.6 miles away and remotely disable them. The radar focused tech company from Seattle hopes to operate two experimental radars'in the immediate vicinity' of the stadium. It will be operated alongside the FBI and'alert authorities' of any unidentified drone activity during the event if it receives authorisation for the project.

Agricultural businesses usually have a massive number of trackable assets (plants, livestock, and machinery), often operate in wide geographic areas in which these assets are located, and are subject to operational factors often beyond their control, such as the amount of sunlight or rainfall they receive, or temperature fluctuations. As such, agriculture is ripe for the adoption of new technologies to help monitor and manage assets on a granular level, and everything from Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, robots, and drones are being used by farms around the globe. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture notes that the farms of today are avid users of agriculture technologies such as robots, temperature and moisture sensors, aerial imaging, and GPS technology, which are more precise and efficient than humans alone, and allow for safer, more efficient, and more profitable operations. One example of how technology enables new farming techniques is the use of robotic harvesting on indoor farms, which today account for a tiny fraction of the 900 million acres of traditional farmland in the U.S. However, these indoor farms are well suited to the growth of vegetables such as tomatoes, lettuce, and other leafy greens, are highly sustainable, generally feature an average yield per acre more than 10 times higher than that of outdoor farms, and represent a continuation of the agricultural sector's trend toward incorporating precision agriculture techniques to improve yields and become more sustainable.

The devices are kicking off debate over regulating the latest frontier of automation in the state, even as online retail giant Amazon has already begun testing them. A bill up for a hearing Monday would restrict the weight of the robots, limit them to sidewalks and crosswalks, and require both insurance and active monitoring by a human, filling in what the bill's sponsor called a gray area in state law.

A Bill Gates-funded startup is seeking permission to test a new kind of drone detector at Sunday's Super Bowl game between the Los Angeles Rams and the New England Patriots in Atlanta, Georgia. Echodyne, a Seattle-based company, filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Sunday to operate two experimental radars "in the immediate vicinity" of Mercedes-Benz Stadium to "alert security personnel, including Federal officers, of any unidentified drone activity during Super Bowl LIII". The drone tests would be conducted under the guidance and direction of the FBI. Atlanta police have said there will be a zero tolerance policy for drones near the Super Bowl stadium, with hundreds of local, state and federal law enforcement officers watching for illegal flights. Reports of rogue drones grounded flights at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey last week, and forced the closure of Gatwick, Britain's second-busiest airport, for several days in December.

The Galapagos Island of Seymour Norte, off the coast of Ecuador, has a vicious invasive rat problem. Despite efforts to curb the spread of the rats in 2007, conservationists found the tiny island was infested yet again a decade later by two common rat species. This time, they employed a high-tech solution to fight the vermin: autonomous drones that fly along predetermined paths and drop bombs of rodent poison, Wired reports. Invasive rodents have decimated native species like iguanas and a number of birds by eating their eggs, and offspring. The government of Ecuador partnered with Island Conservation, an American non-profit, to devise a solution: six-rotor drones specially designed to drop an immense 44 pounds of rat poison pellets per trip.

There is a really interesting concept in psychology called the Johari Window and it suggests that we rarely see ourselves as we actually are. Not only that, but we think other people see us differently than they do. Maybe you're not as charming as we think we are. Maybe that laughter after you told a joke was nervous laughter, but you thought you were hilarious. The key takeaway is that it's rare for people to accurately describe themselves to others as they actually are.

Abstract: "Consumer drone developers often face the challenge of achieving safe autonomous navigation under very tight size, weight, power, and cost constraints. In this talk, I will present our recent results towards a minimalist, but complete perception and navigation solution utilizing only a low-cost monocular visual-inertial sensor suite. I will start with an introduction of VINS-Mono, a robust state estimation solution packed with multiple features for easy deployment, such as online spatial and temporal inter-sensor calibration, loop closure, and map reuse. I will then describe efficient monocular dense mapping solutions utilizing efficient map representation, parallel computing, and deep learning techniques for real-time reconstruction of the environment. The perception system is completed by a geometric-based method for estimating full 6-DoF poses of arbitrary rigid dynamic objects using only one camera. With this real-time perception capability, trajectory planning and replanning methods with optimal time allocation are proposed to close the perception-action loop. The performance of the overall system is demonstrated via autonomous navigation in unknown complex environments, as well as aggressive drone racing in a teach-and-repeat setting."

Is drone delivery the future of deliveries? We know that some companies are already working on such technology, and a recent video published by the Wall Street Journal has revealed that over in the state of Canberra, Australia, Google is already testing out and making deliveries by autonomous drones. Through an app that users can download, they will be able to select the various food items that they want, and the order will be sent to the restaurant who will then prepare the food, package it, and attach it to the drone who will then fly to the customer. From what we can tell, customers will be able to choose their delivery location, meaning that say you're in the park, you can just drop a pin on your location and it'll be able to deliver to you. This is versus more conventional delivery services which usually require you to have a fixed address like a home or an office.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. At Amazon, we continually invest in new technologies to benefit customers. We've been hard at work developing a new, fully-electric delivery system – Amazon Scout – designed to safely get packages to customers using autonomous delivery devices.