This summer, the US Air Force will begin testing a laser mounted on an F-15 warplane, an official said Monday. The Pentagon last year awarded a $26 million contract to Lockheed Martin for a laser program called SHiELD (Self-protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator.) The idea is to put a laser system on aircraft with an output of about 50 kilowatts to test their ability to zap drones or cruise missiles. Air Force scientists hope to have a laser that can defeat drones and missiles ready to put on an F-15 by summer 2019. 'We have got tests starting this summer and the flight tests next summer,' Jeff Stanley, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for science, technology and engineering, told reporters. 'There are still some technical challenges that we have to overcome, mainly size, weight, power.'

Design has consequences Carnegie Mellon University design students are exploring ways to enhance interactions with new technologies and the power of artificial intelligence. Assistant Professor Dan Lockton teaches the course, "Environments Studio IV: Designing Environments for Social Systems" in CMU's School of Design and leads the school's new Imaginaries Lab. "We want the designers of tomorrow to think about the overlap between the human world and AI. Many of our students are going to go work for companies like Facebook or Google, and they're going to be making decisions that might seem very small in the moment -- what text do we put on a button, how easy do we make it for someone to do this thing or that -- but those decisions are going to impact people's lives. We want them thinking through how their design has consequences."

As a teenager working for his dad's construction business, Noah Ready-Campbell dreamed that robots could take over the dirty, tedious parts of his job, such as digging and leveling soil for building projects. Now the former Google engineer is turning that dream into a reality with Built Robotics, a startup that's developing technology to allow bulldozers, excavators and other construction vehicles to operate themselves. 'The idea behind Built Robotics is to use automation technology make construction safer, faster and cheaper,' said Ready-Campbell, standing in a dirt lot where a small bulldozer moved mounds of earth without a human operator. The San Francisco startup is part of a wave of automation that's transforming the construction industry, which has lagged behind other sectors in technological innovation. Backed by venture capital, tech startups are developing robots, drones, software and other technologies to help the construction industry to boost speed, safety and productivity.

Drone footage has show the extent of a major fire at a mill building in Greater Manchester.

Google is not usually shy about touting its accomplishments in the artificial intelligence space, but one win that company does not seem particularly keen on broadcasting is a recent pilot project with the U.S. Department of Defense. In a widely quoted report this week Gizmodosaid it had learned about Google quietly partnering with the DoD on a project to help the Pentagon develop technology for analyzing footage gathered by aerial drones. Google is working with a Defense Department group called Project Maven that was established last year to accelerate the military's adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities for analyzing big data sets. One of the primary missions for the group--as described in this memo--is to find technology the speed up the evaluation process for the massive number of photos and videos that U.S. military drones are gathering daily in support of the Defeat-ISIS campaign. The Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team (AWCFT)--as Project Maven is also known--has been tasked with providing the military with computer vision algorithms for better detecting and classifying objects in drone footage.

Many people, he said, would be surprised to learn of the training, insurance and regulation required for commercial drone operation with the FAA, including the need to receive clearance to work within certain airspace. For example, Ellsworth Air Force Base and Rapid City Regional Airport create a lot of controlled airspace in the area, he said.

The evolution of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), more commonly known as drones, is developing at a rapid pace. Not only is the technology progressing, but regulations are being adapted to encourage wider adoption. With the new FAA Part 107 Rules in the USA, users no longer need to have a commercial pilot license to operate a drone and in the UK, the National Air Traffic Control Service (NATS) is laying the foundation for drones to fly beyond their operators' line of sight – due to the development of new technology that can track small unmanned devices at low altitude. The release of applications is also starting to complement a wider variety of industries, inspiring further implementation. UAVs have come a long way since the Kettering Bug, a drone developed during the First World War.

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. If you thought the "vision" video is a bit much, the capabilities video is less singing and more interesting: Sebastian Thrun's self-flying car company Cora has a passenger drone that may be somewhat less terrible than most other passenger drones: I like Cora primarily because it has wings that can generate lift even if the electrical systems or software systems fail. I'm still not sold on the idea of you not needing a pilot's license to be in one, but this design does seem significantly more survivable than most.

The latest appeal of unmanned aircraft is that they can be deployed in a variety of disaster-ravaged locations. An unmanned drone is prepared to take off March 8 at Woodbine Municipal Airport in South Jersey carrying a "femtocell" that Verizon can fly into an area that loses cellular coverage during a natural or other emergency. CAPE MAY COUNTY, N.J.-- Cell service get clobbered by a hurricane? The rash of devastating storms that knocked out power and phone service to millions in the U.S. last year laid bare how vulnerable those technological lifelines are to extreme weather. Some companies are trying to use one of this decade's coolest developments -- remote-controlled drones -- as a temporary fix.

Californian company Skycatch is building drones that will use machine learning to map sites, plan work, and even guide autonomous construction vehicles on building sites. Clear for takeoff: According to New Scientist, over 5,000 Japanese building sites have used Skycatch drones over the past three years to map construction sites. It takes the drones 15 minutes to scan a site and make a map of its terrain--a process that takes a team of humans several days. A flying foreman: The drones use AI that has been trained on data like labeled aerial YouTube footage depicting different kinds of industrial equipment. That enables them to study footage of a building site as they fly overhead, determine where vehicles are, and suggest how they should be moved.