The only person in kimono at a recent government meeting on flying cars was Kotaro Chiba, a former online-game executive turned financier of a very specific kind. For Chiba, 44, who wears kimono on special occasions to show his pride in Japanese culture, is gathering money for what he calls the Drone Fund. It invests in unmanned vehicles to survey buildings, make deliveries and take aerial photos for tourist boards; hover scooters; and a pilotless cargo craft that's seeking to make it all the way from Japan to Silicon Valley in one go. Chiba is at the forefront of an industry that's only years away from changing our lives. In five to 10 years, the skies could be alive with drones delivering goods, according to McKinsey & Co.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he could not rule out that President Vladimir Putin would raise the alleged drone attack with U.S. President Donald Trump. The two leaders are expected to meet in Paris on Nov. 11.

Volocopter is preparing to run inner-city tests of its autonomous air taxis in Singapore, starting in the second half of 2019. The company and the city-state's civil aviation authority are determining the scope of the tests, which Volocopter plans to conclude with public demo flights. The vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicles look like a cross between a helicopter and a drone, and have 18 rotors working to get you from one place to another. Volocopter claims its machine can fly two people up to 30 kilometers, while it can account for micro turbulences close to skyscrapers to keep your rides smooth. "We are getting ready to start implementing the first fixed routes in cities," Volocopter CEO Florian Reuter said in a press release.

In a move inspired by natural engineering, robotics researchers have demonstrated how tiny palm-size drones can forcefully tug objects 40 times their own mass by anchoring themselves to the ground or to walls. It's a glimpse into how small drones could more actively manipulate their environment in a way similar to humans or larger robots. "Teams of these drones could work cooperatively to perform more complex manipulation tasks," says Matt Estrada, a PhD student in mechanical engineering at Stanford University. "We demonstrated opening a door, but this approach could be extended to turning a ball valve, moving a piece of debris, or retrieving an object of interest from a disaster zone." Winged creatures such as birds, bats, and insects can only lift objects that are about five times their own weight when flying. But Estrada and his colleagues from Stanford University and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland looked instead to the practical approach taken by predatory wasps, which land on the ground to drag larger prey back to their nests.

Drone technology is a hot topic around the country, and here in the St. Louis region, drones are becoming increasingly popular. Industry and city leaders, as well as representatives from construction and engineering firms, utility and mining companies, first responders, photographers and hobbyists gathered on September 26 in St. Louis to learn more about the subject at a forum hosted by St. Louis Downtown Airport and Bi-State Development. Despite the popularity of drones, attendees agreed that we are really only seeing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to exploring the potential uses and implications of the newer technology. With the capabilities of drones constantly evolving, many businesses and agencies seem to be moving quickly to invest in the latest technology, and some are doing so without fully understanding the challenges and opportunities unmanned aircraft systems can present. One of the three panelists, Tomislav Žigo, offered insight into both the drone challenges and the opportunities.

You might know wasps for their ability to brainwash cockroaches or inflict one of the most painful stings on Earth--one so powerful that the actual scientific advice to victims is to just lie down and scream until it passes. Lesser-known is the wasp's superlative ability to carry loads that are unexpectedly heavy given the creature's size. Small drones, or "micro air vehicles," are only able to lift the equivalent of their own weight. If we want flying robots that can move massive objects without requiring them to be the size of pterodactyls, engineers will need to come up with new ways of lifting stuff. So drone designers are looking to wasps for help, and developing creative ways to use the environment itself as a secret weapon in robotics.

NVIDIA VP for Accelerated Computing Ian Buck unveiled the graphics processing unit (GPU) provider's new open-source platform, RAPIDS, which promises major potential for accelerating the ability for data scientists to incorporate neural networks and machine learning into data analytics platforms. Buck unveiled RAPIDS as part of an hour-long opening keynote during NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference (GTC) at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington D.C. this week. NVIDIA has been hosting GTCs throughout 2018 to explain how artificial intelligence, machine learning and other embedded computing processing concepts can be applied in innovative new ways to new industries. Washington D.C. comes after GTCs in Europe, Israel and Japan, with the final one of the year scheduled for China next month. RAPIDS is NVIDIA's new open-source software that serves as a GPU-acceleration platform to give companies ability to analyze massive amounts of data and make accurate business predictions at unprecedented speed. NVIDIA developed the software as a suite of open-source libraries for GPU-accelerated analytics, machine learning and eventually data-visualization purposes.

Nowadays, the contemporary manufactured and small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) known as drones are mostly electric-based, using electric engines for their flight power. The application of such propulsion systems need proper elaboration of efficient and light electric energy sources. The paper tends to shift our approach to drones towards one that will see efficient energy storage through the use of hydrogen – which is outlined in the following sections of this article. Speaking of, there are primarily two methods of on-board energy storing in today's drone system: The second method is one on which we are focusing in this article – mostly because of the complexity of the fuel cells and their constant need for the supply of hydrogen. Currently, hydrogen can be stored in compressed state in pressure bottles or in its liquid state (in cryogenic tanks).

Drones represent a huge opportunity in the construction industry today--and in the future. Goldman Sachs, for instance, predicts a $100 billion market opportunity for drones by 2020. Naturally, consumer and military are big opportunities, but it actually predicts that the fastest growth will happen in businesses and civil governments, with an expectation that they will spend $13 billion on drones between now and 2020. The construction industry is one that is quickly discovering the benefits of drones in the space--and some technology companies are making big moves that will make it easier to do inspection-surveying. Case in point: Topcon Positioning Group recently announced the Intel Perpetual License Inspection-Surveying provision for the Intel Falcon 8 Drone – Topcon Edition will now be included with the system. The license will include flight planning using desktop software, quick survey flights, allowing planning of automated flights in the field, and more.

Razer's senior vice president and general manager Tom Moss is leaving the company for the role of COO at Skydio, a company that focuses on autonomous drones. The announcement, which Moss made via a Medium post, comes right after the mobile company launched the Razer Phone 2, the successor to its first large, gaming-optimized device which launched last year. Moss has played an integral role in the development of smartphones as we know them, working with the early Android team at Google and then starting Nextbit, where he helped develop Baton, the precursor to the many device continuity features we take for granted nowadays. But after 12 years in smartphones, Moss says it's time to "take another leap" and says of autonomous drones that he's "seeing a moment in time where a new technology is going to change so much of our daily lives, and [I'm] damned if I don't want a front row seat this time as well." According to Moss, Skydio is helping propel drones out of the "dumb stage" and into an era of "flying computers."