In the hope of making drone deliveries even more accurate, Project Wing has started making deliveries directly to people's houses in southeastern Australia. The firm announced that it will deliver food from Mexican food chain, Guzman y Gomez, and medicines from Chemist Warehouse pharmacies to customers in rural areas on the border of the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales. Project Wing, which is run by Google parent Alphabet, hopes the trials will help to fine-tune how its drones move goods from where they're located to where they're needed. In the hope of making drone deliveries even more accurate, Alphabet's Project Wing has started making deliveries directly to people's houses in southeastern Australia Project Wing's aircraft has a wingspan of approximately 1.5m (4.9ft) and have four electrically-driven propellers. The total weight, including the package to be delivered, is approximately 10kg (22lb). The aircraft itself accounts for the bulk of that at 8.5kg (18.7lb).

In the two months since the Los Angeles Police Department revealed that it wants to try flying drones, the unmanned aircraft have been the source of an often heated back-and-forth. Advocates say the drones could help protect officers and others by using nonhuman eyes to collect crucial information during high-risk situations. Skeptics worry that use of the devices will steadily expand and include inappropriate -- or illegal -- surveillance. The LAPD's harshest critics want the drone program scrapped before it even takes off. On Tuesday, the civilian board that oversees the LAPD will vote on whether to allow the department to test drones during a one-year pilot program.

PARACHINAR/PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - A suspected U.S. drone strike killed five people on the mountainous Pakistan-Afghanistan border, government and militant sources said on Tuesday, days after a Canadian-American couple held hostage by the Taliban were freed from the same area.

Apparently, Project Wing brought airborne burritos to Virginia Tech last year as preparation for something bigger. Alphabet X's experimental project is now dropping burritos (and medicine) from the skies of Australia as part of a series of tests to figure out how to run a drone delivery service efficiently. Project Wing Co-Lead James Ryan Burgess said they've teamed up with Australia Mexican food chain Guzman y Gomez and pharmacy chain Chemist Warehouse to drop off orders to testers living in a rural area. These testers usually have to take a 40-minute round trip by car to get to the nearest grocery or restaurant, making them the perfect subjects for Wing's experiments. Project Wing has to conduct these tests, because while it has a system that can pre-configure routes, its drones rely on on-board sensors to avoid obstacles.

The importance of every second while a person is having a cardiac arrest can't be stressed enough, and the availability of the requisite medical equipment in the fastest possible time could end up saving many lives. With this objective in mind, Flirtey, a Nevada-based drone-delivery company, has launched specialized drones for defibrillator delivery as part of every response to a cardiac arrest emergency. "We have the ability to deliver lifesaving aid into the hands of people who need it -- why aren't we as a society doing it already? This is one of the most important uses of drone delivery technology, and we believe that by democratizing access to this lifesaving aid, our technology will save more than a million lives over the decades to come," Flirtey CEO Matthew Sweeny told the Reno Gazette-Journal last week. Flirtey will work in collaboration with the Regional Emergency Medical services Authority (REMSA) to provide drone-delivered medical help until trained medical technicians arrive. It will send across an automated external defibrillator via a drone ahead of an ambulance despatch for emergency cases that involve a cardiac arrest.

KAMPALA – As the toll rises above 300 from one of the world's deadliest attacks in years, the al-Shabab extremist group has sent a powerful signal that the international focus on extremism can't afford to overlook the African continent. Saturday's truck bombing on a crowded Mogadishu street showed that al-Shabab, targeted for years by U.S. airstrikes and tens of thousands of African Union forces, has once again made a deadly comeback. Pushed from Somalia's capital in recent years, al-Shabab has retreated mostly to rural areas of the country's south, where the fragile central government can't assert its authority and local fiefdoms are in charge. From there, Africa's deadliest Islamic extremist group has continued to plan guerrilla-style attacks like Saturday's truck bombing in the capital, Mogadishu. While demonstrating al-Shabab's resilience in the face of new military offensives by the U.S. and Somalia in recent months, the attack also highlights the shortcomings of U.S. drone strikes in a politically fraught country with a weak military and even weaker police, analysts told The Associated Press.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, PAKISTAN – Pakistani intelligence officials say suspected U.S. missiles have struck a home in the Kurram tribal region, killing 20 militants. Two intelligence officials said missiles fired from a suspected U.S. drone hit a compound in the Mukbal area near the Afghan border Monday evening. They added that it was being used by militants from the Haqqani network and that one of their top commanders, Sangeen Wali, was killed. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief media. The strike comes a day after roadside bombs killed four security troops engaged in a search operation for militants in Kurram.

How far are you willing to go to get the ultimate selfie? Maria Mercedes Galuppo (@mariamgaluppo) has more. After a few months with your drone, you probably know the ropes. You've practiced how to fly smoothly and safely, and you've taken a few cool pictures. Maybe you're getting so good at this that your cousin wants to pay you to take her engagement photos.

A drone crashed into a commercial plane in Canada on Thursday, renewing the aviation industry's worries about the growing number of small hobbyist aircraft taking to the skies. A landing Skyjet flight was less than two miles from Jean Lesage International Airport in Quebec City when a drone struck the aircraft, according to CTV News. The plane landed successfully and "only sustained minor damage," according to a Sunday statement from Canadian Transport Minister Marc Garneau. "This should not have happened," Garneau told reporters, according to CTV News. "The drone should not have been there."

Machine vision enables robots and unmanned systems to more easily move through and interact with their environments. Cameras are the robots' eyes, while the central processing unit is the brain that interprets all the captured data. Intel RealSense is one technology helping machines see more like humans. Machine vision is nothing new, of course, but 3D depth sensing in real time has long been a major challenge for the robotics industry. While laser, infrared, and radar offer accurate depth sensing, these technologies would drive the price of autonomous systems through the roof.