How can a drone be a life-saving object? Alfonso Zamarro, EENA's Drone Activities Manager, mentioned that the first phase brought great benefits for firefighters and search and rescue teams. Collaborating and making use of EENA efforts and emergency service, and DJI technical knowledge, they were able to notice how drones can help in such emergencies, and what all improvements it requires. "Phase II will go one step further and we need to study and understand its working," says Zamarro. What are the further steps of the program?

Employees from AeroVironment allegedly brought a drone with explosives attached to it in a carry-on bag, on a Delta flight in April 2015. As Bloomberg reports, the flight had 230 passengers and when another employee, Mark Anderson, discovered this and reported it to the Department of Defense a month later, he said he was punished, stripped of his responsibilities and then fired without a severance package. AeroVironment counts the US government as a major customer, Bloomberg notes. It's supplied the Navy with submarine-launched spy drones and made robo-hummingbirds for DARPA, for example. A recent report from the company said that over half of its income is from being a government contractor. It's pretty easy, if not more than a little predictable, to see why the company reacted to Anderson's claims the way it did.

UAVs are tackling everything from disease control to vacuuming up ocean waste to delivering pizza, and more. Drone technology has been used by defense organizations and tech-savvy consumers for quite some time. However, the benefits of this technology extends well beyond just these sectors. With the rising accessibility of drones, many of the most dangerous and high-paying jobs within the commercial sector are ripe for displacement by drone technology. The use cases for safe, cost-effective solutions range from data collection to delivery. And as autonomy and collision-avoidance technologies improve, so too will drones' ability to perform increasingly complex tasks. According to forecasts, the emerging global market for business services using drones is valued at over $127B. As more companies look to capitalize on these commercial opportunities, investment into the drone space continues to grow. A drone or a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) typically refers to a pilotless aircraft that operates through a combination of technologies, including computer vision, artificial intelligence, object avoidance tech, and others. But drones can also be ground or sea vehicles that operate autonomously.

In a lawsuit filed last month and unveiled Thursday, United States defense contractor and drone-maker company AeroVironment was sued by one of the its ex-employees, who claimed he and his colleagues were fired for reporting an incident that violated commercial flight laws. Former programs chief of AeroVironment Mark Anderson claimed in the wrongful termination lawsuit, filed April 18 with the California Superior Court, an unidentified employee of the company traveled from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles in April 2015 on a Delta Air Lines commercial flight with an explosive-laden drone in a carry-on bag. The flight was carrying 230 passengers at the time. It was unclear how the employee managed to take bomb-loaded drone past Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents before getting on the flight. TSA has an extensive list of items that are banned on commercial flights, be in carry-on or check-in luggage.

WASHINGTON – Dramatic new drone video of the Niger ambush that killed four American soldiers shows U.S. forces desperately trying to escape and fighting for their lives after friendly Nigerien forces mistook them for the enemy. It describes how the fleeing troops set up a quick defensive location on the edge of a swamp and -- thinking they were soon to die -- wrote messages home to their loved ones. The video, released by the Pentagon with explanatory narration, includes more than 10 minutes of drone footage, file tape and animation that wasn't made public last week when the military released a portion of the final report on the October attack. The video depicts for the first time the harrowing hours as troops held off their enemy and waited for rescue. There were 46 U.S. and Nigerien troops out on the initial mission in the west African nation, going after but failing to find a high-value militant, then collecting intelligence at a site where the insurgent had been.

There were 46 U.S. and Nigerien troops out on the initial mission in the west African nation, going after but failing to find a high-value militant, then collecting intelligence at a site where the insurgent had been. The team was heading home when it was attacked by more than 100 militants just outside the village of Tongo Tongo. During the firefight, a number of the Nigeriens escaped by truck, but four U.S. and four Nigerien troops were gunned down.

WASHINGTON – Dramatic new drone video of the Niger ambush that killed four American soldiers shows U.S. forces desperately trying to escape and fighting for their lives after friendly Nigerien forces mistook them for the enemy. It describes how the fleeing troops set up a quick defensive location on the edge of a swamp and -- thinking they were soon to die -- wrote messages home to their loved ones. The video, released by the Pentagon with explanatory narration, includes more than 10 minutes of drone footage, file tape and animation that wasn't made public last week when the military released a portion of the final report on the October attack. The video depicts for the first time the harrowing hours as troops held off their enemy and waited for rescue. There were 46 U.S. and Nigerien troops out on the initial mission in the West African nation, going after but failing to find a high-value militant, then collecting intelligence at a site where the insurgent had been.

Dramatic new drone video of the Niger ambush that killed four American soldiers shows U.S. forces desperately trying to escape, and fighting for their lives when friendly Nigerien forces mistook them for the enemy.

NEW YORK – AeroVironment Inc. was accused of trying to conceal that employees transported a drone rigged with explosives on a commercial flight and retaliating against a manager who told the government. In April 2015, AeroVironment workers traveled to Los Angeles from Salt Lake City on a Delta Air Lines Inc. There were about 230 civilian passengers aboard, the lawsuit states. The plaintiff, Mark Anderson, who oversaw security for the drone-maker's top-secret government programs, learned of the incident in May 2015, according to the complaint. After reporting it to the U.S. Department of Defense, he was reprimanded, stripped of his responsibilities and ultimately fired without severance, Anderson alleges.

It's not easy to teach drones to fly quickly and safely. You usually have to create an elaborate proving ground with real obstacles, and a single mishap could prove very costly. Have the drones fly around imaginary objects. The school's engineers have created a virtual testing ground, nicknamed Flight Googles, that has drones flying through a simulated landscape in the safety of an empty room. Motion capture cameras around the space track the orientation of the drone and help the system send realistic, customized virtual images to the drone to convince it that it's flying through an apartment or another obstacle-laden environment.