Hermes has announced a new trial for self-driving delivery robots in the UK. The autonomous machines, which have a top speed of 4mph, are 55cm tall and 70cm long, and weigh 18kg. They can carry up to 10kg at a time, with packages stored inside a secure compartment that can be unlocked with a code sent to the customer's phone. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

In dozens of urban centers across the globe, city planners are putting eyes in the sky to help them make more-informed decisions about improving city life. Using advanced technology in digital aerial photography, laser imaging and analytics, cities are tackling a wide variety of problems. Singapore has created a 3-D cityscape to help make decisions about where to place solar panels and plant rooftop gardens, among other things. New York City firefighters are using drones to get better overhead views during fires. In Philadelphia, lasers beamed from airplanes are used to detect dangerous roof damage in dilapidated properties.

The Prison Service and the police are to pool intelligence to tackle the problem of drones flying drugs and mobile phones to prisoners in jails. They will forensically examine captured drones to try to find out who was flying them. The invention of easy-to-fly, remote-controlled aircraft has caused a huge security headache for prisons. The national initiative will involve police and prison officers from all around England and Wales. They will share information about the types of quadcopters and methods used, in an attempt to curb the problem.

With the number of commercial drones expected to soar into the millions in the next few years, operators whose unmanned aircraft malfunction or crash will be looking for places to get them fixed. Some repair shops authorized by manufacturers to fix smaller drones are already having trouble keeping up with demand. For several weeks, a California company had a note posted on its website referring specifically to the Phantom drone: "Temporarily not accepting any new repairs at this time due to high volume. The message was recently removed. While such waits might be frustrating for operators, it spells opportunity for repair shops keen to diversify and budding drone mechanics who could start lucrative careers repairing commercial drones without having to pay for a four-year college degree. "I'm trying to hire two experienced drone technicians at $20 an hour and I can't find anybody," said James Barnes, who founded the New Jersey Drone Academy. "This gives kids in urban areas that can't go to college now a chance to work at a trade and make decent money." Northland Community and Technical College in Minnesota has been teaching unmanned aircraft maintenance for larger military-type drones. It is expanding its program to include smaller drone repair, and school officials are promising a high-paying job after just one or two years. "The reality is, the people coming out of the trade schools, the technical colleges, places like that, are the people out there getting jobs and they're getting paid nicely to do it," said Zack Nicklin, unmanned aircraft instructor at the school in Thief River Falls, Minn. Unmanned aircraft owners basically have three options when their drones need tune-ups or repairs. They can send it back to the manufacturer, send it to a repair shop or fix it themselves. Most smaller shops specialize in hobby grade or low-end commercial grade drones, specific to a few manufacturers. Those drones typically cost a few thousand dollars to buy, and about $150 to fix, not including parts. The more expensive commercial drones generally need repair experts, many of whom have backgrounds in manned aviation. Brad Hayden of Albuquerque, N.M., is president and CEO of Robotic Skies, which is building a network of affiliated repair stations around the world. He currently has more than 120 service stations, most of which work on higher-end drones that cost $10,000 and up, and he plans to recruit more shops, as needed. "The industry is always short of avionics technicians.

A river of red-hot lava was caught flowing out from Mount Etna in breathtaking new drone footage. Smoking magma can be see rolling down the snow-topped mountainside as the drone glides in and out of the red-hot flow. The latest outpouring comes just weeks after an eruption forced a BBC reporter and a scientist to flee for their lives. Etna, at 3,330 metres (10,926 feet), is the highest volcano in mainland Europe. The volcano, one of the most active in the world, has been largely dormant for the last two years.

While laser weapons have been a staple in science fiction films for decades, the US military is inching closer to making these a reality. Lockheed Martin has announced a 60 kW laser weapon that soon will be installed on an Army truck for testing against mortars and small drones. And experts believe that lasers even more powerful than this could be widely used as soon as 2020. Lockheed Martin's laser is 60-kilowatt, and invisible to the naked eye. By focusing the beam onto a target, the technology rapidly heats the inside of an incoming mortar round, causing it to explode mid-air.

Who needs fishing prowess when you have a remote-controlled, sonar-equipped, bait-dropping, mini-submersible at your disposal? Because with the new PowerRay underwater drone, that's exactly what you get. The PowerRay UUV comes from Beijing-based drone manufacturer PowerVision, makers of the PowerEgg UAV that we saw last August. While the Ray officially debuted back at CES in January, a technical issue with their display (read: their tank sprung a leak) prevented the company from showing off the device in its natural environment. However, at the company's launch party at the Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco this week, we were afforded a close up view of the new drones.

FILE - In this June 22, 2016, file photo, a drone aircraft with a payload of simulated blood flies during a ship-to-shore delivery simulation in Lower Township, N.J. With the number of commercial drones expected to soar into the millions in the next few years, it spells an opportunity for budding drone mechanics to make a good living without spending a lot of time on training. A community college in northwestern Minnesota that has been teaching unmanned aircraft maintenance for larger military-type drones is expanding its program to include smaller drone repair.

For years, companies like Amazon have promised that they'll eventually be delivering packages using drones. One problem, at least in the United States: The Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA's) Small UAS Rule doesn't allow drones to be flown outside the visual range of the remote pilot. That pretty much puts drone deliveries on hold. The FAA is, however, exploring how to relax that requirement and has waived it for a couple of companies, one of which is PrecisionHawk, based in Raleigh, North Carolina. But it is working on a system for managing drone flights so that they could be safely conducted outside the operator's visual range.

Equipped with a state-of-the-art thermal camera, the drone crisscrossed the field, scanning it for cool, soggy patches where a gopher may have chewed through the buried drip irrigation line and caused a leak. In the drought-prone West, where every drop of water counts, California farmers are in a constant search for ways to efficiently use the increasingly scarce resource. Cannon Michael is putting drone technology to work on his fields at Bowles Farming near Los Banos, 120 miles southeast of San Francisco. About 2,100 companies and individuals have federal permission to fly drones for farming, according to the drone industry's Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. Federal regulators planned to relax the rules Monday on commercial drones, a move that could spur even greater use of such aircraft on farms. Michael is descended from Henry Miller, a renowned cattle rancher, farmer and Western landowner who helped transform semi-arid central California into fertile farmland 150 years ago by building irrigation canals, some still flowing today.