Vid Researchers have taught a drone to fly autonomously through the streets of Zürich, Switzerland, by using a simple neural network. As tech companies toy with the idea of using mini-drones for delivery, monitoring buildings, or surveillance, then figuring out how to fly them without human control is vital if sales are to scale up. A paper published in the IEEE Robotics and Automation journal (here's a free pre-print version) shows how AI can help make that process easier. Known as DroNet, the convolutional neural network has eight layers and is much smaller and less complex than other architectures. It works by examining images from a camera, and produces two outputs: a steering angle so it can hover and skirt around obstacles, and a collision probability so it knows whether or not it's likely to bump into stuff, and take appropriate action.

KABUL, Afghanistan – An Afghan official says two U.S. drone strikes this week hit a building where dozens of Taliban were meeting in southeastern province of Ghazni, killing 26 insurgents and wounding 22. Arif Noori, a provincial spokesman, says the drone assault was carried out on Tuesday during an offensive in Ghazni province's Andar district where the U.S. military came to the aid of Afghan security forces battling the Taliban. He says among those killed was a senior commander, known only as Aqhani, who ran the insurgency in Ghazni province. The first U.S. drone strike hit the building, the second struck an hour later after more Taliban had gathered at the scene.

You might be using your drone (or thinking about getting a drone) for epic vacation shots and ultra-romantic wedding videos, but you should be thinking bigger. What if, instead of taking pictures of you, your drone could help you monitor hundreds of acres of crops? And what if it could fix those flaws or water those crops as soon as it spotted them? Just as self-driving cars could fundamentally rearchitect the way cities work, drones have a disruptive potential that's hard to overstate. They could change the way people and goods are transported (where we're going, we don't need roads!), eliminate some jobs and create others, and upend the way we think about distance. Drones could bring the internet to people who don't have it, deliver food and medicine to people who need it, and cast a watchful eye over anyone and everyone. Drones are even inspiring new sports!

Agents found Jorge Rivera in possession of 13 pounds of methamphetamine in Aug. 2017 when he was trying to use a drone to smuggle drugs across the border. A 25-year-old man who was previously arrested after using a drone to smuggle drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border has been sentenced to 12 years in prison, border officials announced. A jury sentenced Jorge Rivera on Wednesday after he was convicted last week of trying to traffic 13 pounds of methamphetamine into the United States during the summer, according to a release from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Rivera was detained on the night of Aug. 8, 2017 after a border patrol agent saw a drone flying across the border near the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the original arrest report said. An officer later reportedly located the suspect who was operating the drone and found him in possession of a bag containing "multiple plastic-wrapped packages containing methamphetamine."

It's nice that consumer drones are getting easier and easier to use, incorporating more safeguards and autonomy and stuff. Generally, though, piloting them does still require some practice and skill, along with free hands and a controller that's probably more expensive than it should be. This is why we've been seeing more research on getting drones set up so that unaltered, uninstrumented, and almost entirely untrained users can still do useful things with them. At Simon Fraser University, roboticists are seeing how far they can push this idea, and they've come up with a system for controlling a drone that doesn't require experience, or a controller. Instead, you use your face, and it's totally intuitive and natural.

Who will deliver our packages in the future -- drones, or self-driving robots? Amazon has an entire division devoted to developing drones that can carry them over the air to our doorsteps, but it also recently filed a patent on a ground-based, driverless-delivery vehicle. In so doing it joins a handful of startups and companies who are working on similarly small, self driving robots that will carry goods via the sidewalk. They're much slower than drones and they get in the way of pedestrians, but developers at thyssenkrupp Elevator think the wheeled couriers will catch on quicker than drones. Torsten Scholl, who invented the TeleRetail robot with thyssenkrupp and displayed it at the Washington Auto Show last week, says he recently took the gadget to a small village in the Swiss mountains, hoping to film it in action with a drone. Soon after he sent the drones up in the air, passers-by in the village approached him to complain, saying they "didn't want drones around here," and that the devices weren't allowed.

We are at the dawn of the age of robots. Everyday, headlines seem to scream at us that the robot apocalypse is upon us, and that these machines will replace human jobs by the millions. But as with any technological advance, the story is more complicated than simple displacement. Even as Amazon submits a patent for a drone delivery tower and Walmart submits one for a drone-deploying blimp, both of which would eliminate the need for traditional warehouses, it's hiring more full-time workers than ever before. The latest estimate places the company's robot fleet at around 45,000, a 50% increase from the previous year.

With a warehouse equipped with over 45,000 robots, and a new drone delivery system, Amazon is pinning its future on artificial intelligence. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon has spoken this week about AI describing it as the'golden age' of technology capable of solving problems in the realm of science fiction. And while Bezos did not go into detail about his future plans to use AI at Amazon, he hinted that it is being used in'literally hundreds of things' across the firm. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon has spoken this week about artificial intelligence development, describing it as the'golden age' of technology Amazon now has 45,000 robots shuffling products around 20 distributions centers. They navigate by scanning coded stickers on the floor, following digital commands that are beamed wirelessly from a central computer.

Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), have been used for more than three decades, but in the last few years drones are increasingly being developed and used for commercial purposes. But while inventors and entrepreneurs in Western countries struggle with strict regulations, many African countries are proving very innovative and accepting in terms of drone usage across industries. From Kigali to Khartoum, pioneers are using drones to tackle some of the continent's current challenges. In Rwanda, drones deliver blood to almost half of the country's blood transfusion centres. In Malawi, UAVs deliver HIV test kits to and from remote parts of the country.

OSAKA – The nation's first drone museum opened in the city of Osaka in December featuring a wide variety of drones on display and for sale, with visitors able to try them out. "There are not many places in Japan where people can see and touch drones. We hope to promote them from the Kansai region," said an official of Skyasky Co., the drone pilot school based in Toyonaka, Osaka Prefecture, that runs Drone Museum Horie. The museum, located in Osaka's Minamihorie district, exhibits 16 types of drones produced in Japan and abroad, ranging from an 18-gram palm-sized indoor drone to a gigantic crop-spraying drone equipped with a 10-liter tank. Visitors can learn the history of drones, from the earliest models for industrial use produced in New Zealand in 2011 to the latest model that sends live video footage to a smartphone.