Can you launch fireworks from your drone? OK, before I answer this question I have my own question: Why? Guys, why would you want to put fireworks on your drone? Fireworks are cool and drones are cool. Therefore fireworks on drones are cool to the power of two, I guess. As a PSA, let's say that my official stance is that drones should just be drones and fireworks should just be fireworks.

On March 29, 2018, a Toyota Land Cruiser carrying five members of the Al Manthari family was travelling through the Yemeni province of Al Bayda, inland from the Gulf of Aden. The family were heading to the city of al-Sawma'ah to pick up a local elder to witness the sale of a plot of land. At two in the afternoon, a rocket from a US Predator drone hit the vehicle, killing three of its passengers. One of the four men killed, Mohamed Saleh al Manthari, had three children aged between one and six. His father, Saleh al Manthari, says Mohamed was the family's only breadwinner.

How comfortable are we leaving life and death decisions up to robots? While machines can crunch all the data, they must be programmed by humans to use that data. That means we as humans need to grapple with these scenarios to instruct machines on how to make decisions regarding life and death matters. From autonomous cars to drones deciding what targets to hit to robotic doctors, we're at the point where many are contemplating the life and death decisions AI robots will have to make. At first, the decisions we imagine machines needing to make don't seem that troubling.

Towns facing another season of drought and wildfire are turning to drone shows as a less risky alternative to organized fireworks. This year's July 4th marks the 242nd year since the creation of the United States. SAN FRANCISCO -- Get in the car, kids. It's time to see the Fourth of July drone show. Towns in California, Colorado and Arizona -- facing another season of drought and wildfire -- are turning to drone shows as a less dangerous alternative to organized fireworks, encouraged by the development of jaw-dropping, choreographed shows like the one Intel prepared for the Winter Olympics broadcast.

Parrot was one of the first (if not the absolute first) companies to take a crack at the consumer drone space. The AR Drone came out in 2010 (!), and Parrot followed it up a solid upgrade in the AR Drone 2.0 a few years later. Since then, we've seen the Bebop, some clever flying toys, and had a bunch of fun with the fixed-wing Disco. But at this point, most consumers probably think DJI when they think of camera drones, because of how pervasive Phantoms and Mavics are. It's not like this caught Parrot by surprise or anything--two years ago, they saw the direction that the market was trending, and started working on a completely new consumer platform designed to be exceptionally easy to use and exceptionally portable, with the ability to produce exceptionally good aerial videos. Earlier last month, Parrot announced the Anafi, a US $700 consumer camera drone with a unique design and some unique features, coupled with the sort of thoughtful usability that we've come to expect from Parrot. We got a pretty good look at the drone in New York City, and have been trying one out over the past weeks. At Parrot's event in NYC, CEO Henri Seydoux introduced the drone with pictures like this: The idea, Seydoux said, was to build a drone like an insect, with a head (camera), thorax (electronics), and abdomen (battery).

Will AI take away our jobs, leaving us unemployed? While some jobs will indeed change or disappear--as they have always done and will continue to do--AI can also be a human force multiplier in business applications where we humans are still under-delivering. One set of jobs recently added to the endangered species list--so to speak--consists of collecting, storing and analyzing terabytes of drone footage of telecommunication towers, pipelines, solar panels, bridges and other structures where gathering data can be treacherous for humans. The repetitive operation of flying a drone--and analyzing the copious data collected by it--is a job prone to fatigue and errors. Pilots aside, analysts tasked with finding a crack in the 351st insulator inspected during the 25th drone mission of the day might be expected to tire. If cracks on insulators are not their life's passion, chances are they will eventually make a fatal or money-losing mistake.

Nicole Camarillo was touring the Army base at Fort Meade, Maryland in early 2017 when a young captain--I'll call him Matt, due to the sensitivity of his position--crossed her path. I've got to talk to that kid, Camarillo remembers thinking. Just weeks before, she'd seen Matt deliver a presentation on a tool he was developing to counter enemy drone strikes in the Middle East. The technology, he explained, was being developed on a "shoestring budget." As executive director of talent strategy at the US Army Cyber Command, a relatively new branch of the Army, Camarillo's job is to convince top employees in Silicon Valley that they should sacrifice their stock options and six-figure salaries and apply their technological know-how in the Army instead.

PTC (NASDAQ:PTC), a IoT, Industry 4.0 and control software provider to government and industry, has partnered with Rockwell Automation (NYSE:ROK), the world's largest company dedicated to industrial automation and information, "to accelerate growth for both companies and enable them to be the partner of choice for customers around the world who want to transform their physical operations with digital technology." Rockwell is making a $1 billion equity investment in PTC as part of the deal in which the two agreed to align their respective smart factory technologies and industrial automation platforms. JD (JingDong) (NASDAQ:JD), the Chinese equivalent to Amazon and China's 2nd largest e-commerce provider, raised $500 million from Google/Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG). Like Amazon, JD is heavy in the automated logistics business and now, with this investment, JD plans to open restaurants staffed by robots starting this August and ramping up to 1,000 by 2020. JD is also involved in last mile deliveries and just launched 20 mobile robot carts in the Beijing area (each robot can deliver up to 30 different parcels).

"Small Unmanned Aerial Systems are becoming an essential tool of warfare and increasing funding for research and testing on resilience, communications, and operations is of critical importance. Rome Lab's ability to adapt to emerging challenges, especially in the arena of unmanned aerial systems continues to grow. This funding I secured will ensure that Rome can continue to lead the charge to find innovative ways of detecting, identifying, and disabling potentially hostile UAS's. It will help Rome Lab serve the critical and otherwise unmet research needs of the Department of Defense." said Tenney.