The armed robbery suspect hiding out in a camper in rural Michigan heard state troopers closing in, so he dashed into a field and crouched among the 6-foot-tall cornstalks. What he didn't know was that police had eyes on him from above. Drones are fast becoming an essential tool for more law enforcement agencies, changing how officers carry out everyday tasks and bringing air surveillance to departments with limited budgets. The remote-controlled flying machines have been deployed to bust up a ring stealing bulldozers and backhoes from construction sites on the East Coast; to patrol beaches for sharks; and to scan neighborhoods for survivors in hurricane zones. In this October 2017 photo, Officer Scott Hermon prepares to pilot the department's first drone in Streetsboro, Ohio.

With artificial intelligence set to revolutionize how the military runs surveillance missions around the world, one top Defense Department official hopes to bring intelligent systems to the Pentagon's efforts both on and off the battlefield. As director of defense intelligence for warfighter support, Air Force Lt. Gen Jack Shanahan spearheaded Project Maven, a Pentagon initiative to rapidly turn drone surveillance footage into useful intelligence through machine learning. The tool is scheduled to launch by the end of the year. The Pentagon has long used drones over the Middle East to inform the fight against groups like ISIS. Though drone and camera technology have advanced significantly, the back end looks much the same as it did decades ago, with analysts still spending countless hours manually scrolling through video for points of interest.

ZURICH (Reuters) - Switzerland's defense ministry has admitted sending staff to test reconnaissance drones in contested land held by Israel - an embarrassing blow for the neutral European country's status as an honest broker in the Middle East.

Mountari said the team of 12 U.S. Special Forces soldiers and 30 Nigerian troops had been "right up to the Mali border and had neutralized some bandits" just before the ambush took place. He declined to give further details. The U.S. military has been adamant that the Oct. 3-4 mission was not intended to involve contact with enemy forces. Mountari said: "They (U.S.-Nigerien contingent) came back to Niger, they greeted the population, they gathered intelligence and it was inside the country, when they didn't expect anything, that the attack happened."

This week, the connected world brings artificial intelligence and augmented reality to medicine, robots have a go at music making and Matternet's autonomous drones ditch their human minders and successfully refuel themselves. Autonomous drone delivery service Matternet has developed an automated base station where drones can refuel and swap payloads by themselves. There's no human involvement at all – instead, packages ready for pick-up carry a QR code detailing their destinations, and are collected from a drawer on the Matternet Station by the drones. The startup has been transporting blood and pathology samples to labs in an effort to start commercializing its technology. Computer-assisted surgery has a new player in town: an augmented reality headset specifically designed for surgeons performing spinal surgery.

A high-flying drone equipped with surveillance sensors and a wingspan longer than that of a Boeing 737 will be the newest way for the U.S. Navy to monitor the seas. The first operational MQ-4C Triton drone will be delivered by Northrop Grumman Corp. to the Navy within the next week at Point Mugu Naval Air Station near Oxnard, with a second drone to follow by the end of the year. The two drones will undergo testing at Point Mugu before being deployed to Guam next year. The program has strong California roots -- engineering and design is done in Rancho Bernardo, and the drone is assembled in Palmdale. During low-rate initial production, that line will churn out three Tritons a year.

The makers of the world's first hoverbike have revealed plans for a self flying air taxi that seats five. Hoversurf, whose hoverbikes are used by police in Dubai, is launching a new product known as'The Formula Project'. It uses fold-away wings and 52 tiny turbine Venturi propulsion units - and its makers say experience is not necessary to navigate the skies. The Hoversurf drone taxi operates with'no human factor involved', and its wings fold up, allowing it to fit in a standard car park space. They also include 80-centimeter platforms and can be parked in regular parking spaces.

A drone captured video of a boat capsizing in Florida and a daring rescue by a nearby 13-year-old surfer. A drone captured video of a boat capsizing in Jupiter Inlet, Florida, and a daring rescue in the rough water by a nearby 13-year-old surfer. The drone pilot, Kevin Cadby, was flying his drone at Jupiter Inlet to capture video of the water and the boats, as he occasionally does. He saw the boat coming in from far out and decided to follow the boat with his drone, he said. "The wind was blowing in at 20 miles per hour, that inlet can be treacherous," Cadby said.

In a global market that makes room for more competitors by the day, some companies are turning to AI and machine learning to try to gain an edge. Supply chain and inventory management is a domain that has missed some of the media limelight, but one where industry leaders have been hard at work developing new AI and machine learning technologies over the past decade. Many well-known companies are now use machine learning to optimize business processes in ways that might have been deemed science fiction 30 years ago, from customer service inquiries to planning for next month's shelf supply based on satellite data. Supply chain and inventory management is primed to embody the concept of smart automation over the next five to 10 years. We've highlighted three applications of inventory management with machine learning technology, providing a tip-of-the-iceberg view of what's possible.

YANGON, Myanmar – Myanmar authorities have charged two foreign journalists, a local freelancer who works as an interpreter and their driver for allegedly flying drones illegally over and around the government's parliament buildings, police said Sunday. Mok Choy Lin, a Malaysian, and Lau Hon Meng, a Singaporean, journalists for Turkish Radio and Television, were detained along with their local interpreter and freelance journalist Aung Naing Soe after flying drones over the parliament building on Friday, police said. The four were charged under the Export and Import Law and face up to three years in prison if found guilty, police said, adding that a trial would begin at the end of a 15-day remand. Police officer San Aung said the drone was imported without permission. The detained journalists and driver have not been allowed to see family members since the arrest on Friday, one of the family members said.