It may be a common sight in the world of Star Wars, but so far laser weapons have struggled to make it onto a real battlefield. However, that could soon change as Department of Defense bosses have revealed a new $3.2m project with Clemson University engineers to investigate the science behind laser weapons. The military has already deployed some lasers as defensive weapons to shoot down incoming missiles and drones, but the two new projects will address underlying issues with making them more widespread. The two new projects are based on helping develop the fundamental technology that could see laser weapons such as those seen here in Star Wars: The Force Awakens become a reality. John Ballato and Lin Zhu are taking two different but complementary approaches to creating a high-energy laser that could be used as a weapon.

We develop the fastest, smallest and lightest distance sensors for advanced robotics in challenging environments. These sensors are born from a fruitful collaboration with CERN while developing flying indoor inspection systems. How we began started with a challenge: the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) asked if we could use drones to perform fully autonomous inspections within the tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider. Now if you haven't seen it, it's a complex environment; perhaps one of the most unfriendly environments imaginable for fully autonomous drone flight. But we accepted the mission, rolled-up our sleeves, and got to work.

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The ebb and flow of legal rules when it comes to flying a drone, whether it's a cheap mainstream model or something a little more intense, is confusing. It also differs depending on country, and even state. When it comes to Texas, both the House and the Senate are pushing a bill that could attach jail sentences to any pilot found guilty of flying something over oil and gas drilling facilities, as well as telecomms infrastructure and concentrated animal feeding operations -- factory farms. Politicians want these structures added to a "critical infrastructure" list, where flying a drone lower than 400 feet aboveit would be a Class B misdemeanor and could even mean up to 180 days in jail. The facilities would join a list that includes power plants, dams and other refineries, but critics say the additions would affect the public's First Amendment rights.

The Times report also stated the company was working on technology to take overhead videos and images. According to Snapchat's offering prospectus issued at the time of its initial public offering (IPO), an average Snapchat user opened the app more than 18 times a day and around 2.5 billion images and videos were sent each day using the app. Spectacles also represent the company's vision for hardware -- Snap, it seems, is aspiring to build on Snapchat's success by offering users unique ways to capture videos and images. Its namesake app was one of many photo/video-based apps, until it started offering a'Stories' feature – users could post videos that would stay on the app for 24 hours and then disappear.

New rule: From now on, all sporting events must begin with an official bringing the game ball to the referee via the magic of drone-style hoverboard vehicles. That can be the only conclusion after watching the absolutely insane demonstration recorded at the Portuguese Cup Final on Sunday, which started with a man riding on air, Green Goblin style, and landing delicately in front of a ref to deliver the game's soccer ball. It was what every sports event with a ball should have from this very moment on.

At least that's the obvious conclusion based on Snap's acquisition of Ctrl Me Robotics for "under $1 million," a deal that was first reported by Buzzfeed on Friday. Although the report calls the Venice Beach-based company a drone manufacturer, a subsequent report from Variety indicates that Ctrl Me Robotics' true expertise is customizing existing drones to be able to carry cameras rather than specializing in producing drones. Additionally, the Variety report claims that the deal actually occurred late last year. Although it's unclear what Snap's plans are for the company's expertise, a least one hint may rest in an Instagram post from Ctrl Me Robotics from almost two years ago.

The new DJI Spark drone says it responds to hand gestures for flights. How easy is it to master? Jefferson Graham takes it out for a first flight to find out on #TalkingTech. A link has been sent to your friend's email address. A link has been posted to your Facebook feed.

USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham thinks the new gesture controlled DJI Spark drone is the wave of the future in computing. Today, we move to the hands. In one of the most jaw-dropping tech demos of the year, drone manufacturer DJI this week showed off a new quadcopter that can be flown with hand gestures. Move your palm left to fly that way, extend your hand to land it. As someone who spends a lot of time flying drones and juggling with video-game like controllers to operate them, this is the holy grail. No more worries about connections and keeping my head down to operate--just wave my hands in the air and let the drone soar.

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 two 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. With its sensing, mapping, and localization capabilities, the Google Tango platform has a lot of promise for robotics. Here's an update on some of what Google has been working on with it: And here's the talk that Johnny Lee from the Tango project gave at Google I/O earlier this month.