Over 770,000 drone owners have registered to fly in the US since the FAA made it mandatory in December 2015, Administrator Michael Huerta told drone group AUVSI yesterday. As Recode notes, that's up from 670,000 at the beginning of the year, meaning 100,000 users have signed up in the last three months alone. The FAA has also issued 37,000 Remote Pilot Certificates that let drone owners do filming, inspection and other commercial operations. It's likely that a lot of folks are ignoring the pilot license and registration rules, so it's hard to say how many drones that are supposed to be registered ... aren't. Nevertheless, there are only 320,000 manned aircraft registered, from ultralights to jumbo jets, and the FAA has been doing that process for 100 years.

A searing hot laser capable of cutting through aircrafts in seconds has been demonstrated for the first time by the Ministry of Defence. The research will feed into the Dragonfire programme - a strategy intended to create a laser capable of becoming an alternative to missiles. The idea is to take down drones and cut through the hulls of aircraft and armoured vehicles in a more efficient manner. The technology is not yet ready to deploy, with another five to ten years of research ahead of it to perfect the system. The MoD said: 'It won't be a thing of sleek, space age beauty, looking more like a fridge on a truck than a thing of science fiction!

The U.S. military is developing a fairy-tale-inspired "Gremlin" program that aims to launch and retrieve drones in midair. "Gremlins" are a swarm of drones that can be deployed from a manned aircraft, according to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the branch of the U.S. military charged with developing new and innovative technologies for the nation's war fighters. The Gremlin program will allow aircraft pilots to launch the drones as needed, and call them back to the transport plane while both are still in flight. DARPA announced the Gremlin concept in 2015, when the agency called for proof-of-concept designs for the first phase of the project. Now, DARPA is moving on to the second phase, which will see the continued development of two ideas, according to Scott Wierzbanowski, DARPA program manager.

WASHINGTON – The world's largest manufacturer of civilian drones is proposing that the craft continually transmit identification information to help government security agencies and law enforcement figure out which might belong to rogue operators. DJI, a Chinese company, said in a paper released Monday that radio transmissions of an identification code, possibly the operator's Federal Aviation Administration's registration number, could help allay security concerns while also protecting the operator's privacy. The paper suggests steps that can be taken to use existing technologies to develop an identification system, and that operators could include more identification information in addition to a number if they wish. Anyone with the proper radio receiver could obtain those transmissions from the drone, but only law enforcement officials or aviation regulators would be able to use that registration number to identify the registered owner. Law enforcement agencies and the U.S. military raised security concerns last year after FAA officials proposed permitting more civilian drone flights over crowds and densely populated areas.

A startup based in Petah Tikva, Isreal, Airobotics,has scored the right to fly drones autonomously for business purposes in Israel. The Civil Aviation Authority of Israel (CAAI) was the first in the world to authorize commercial, fully unmanned drone flights in their nation's airspace. Airobotics' drones are marketed for use in site surveying, security and other industrial applications. Allowing these drones to fly sans operator means that companies can run inspections for miles along power lines, train tracks, or acres of farmland, for example, without humans positioned along the route or token interruptions for point-checks. The startup's self-flying, quadcopter drones launch and land from a base station where they can swap out spent batteries for newly charged ones.

Drone footage shows the extent of the destruction after a suspected gas explosion on Merseyside. Two people were seriously injured and 32 others hurt.

Military delegates arrive at the Great Hall of the People for a meeting ahead of Saturday's opening ceremony of the National People's Congress (NPC), in Beijing, China March 4, 2016. As Washington fiddles, China is investing billions in U.S. startups with cutting-edge products that could have military applications at the same time it is dialing back investments in less critical American industries such as entertainment. A New York Times story this week says that among the startups are companies working on artificial intelligence for military robots, rocket engines, ship sensors and printers that could produce high-tech components such as computer screens for military jets. Many of the firms making such investments are owned by companies controlled by the Chinese government or connected to its leaders. A blog post last December on the website of CB Insights, which tracks startup investments, says that China poured $9.9 billion into new Silicon Valley firms in 2015 and made an additional $3.5 billion in tech investments in the first nine months of last year.

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. Japan recently announced a major robotics event for next year. The World Robot Summit will feature a series of competitions, talks, and exhibits.

More and more companies are putting drones to work, including tech giants, manufacturers, utilities, and news organizations. With a broad range of practical applications and rapidly evolving technology, drones offer huge untapped potential, but not every market offers equal opportunities for growth. Here are seven facts and forecasts to know before investing. The demand for drones in the U.S. is projected to rise 10% annually to $4.4 billion in 2020, and the number of vehicles sold will more than double to 5.5 million. Drones sold to commercial and consumer users can cost less than $100 on the low end for toy drones to $10,000 or more on the high end for professional drones with sophisticated sensors and controls. Civilian markets are in the early stages of development, and over the next decade sales are expected to grow at explosive rates, similar to those posted by smartphones following the introduction of the iPhone in 2007.

Starship Technologies' delivery robots, which can be found traveling the sidewalks of Washington, D.C., get smarter the more they drive -- learning about sidewalk and traffic patterns with every trip they take. Starship Technologies' delivery robots, which can be found traveling the sidewalks of Washington, D.C., get smarter the more they drive -- learning about sidewalk and traffic patterns with every trip they take. Here's a classic big city dilemma (sorry suburban folks): It's late at night, the weather is bad, and you're hungry. Your favorite restaurant is less than a mile away, but you don't want to leave the house, and you don't want to pay a $5 delivery fee -- plus tip -- for a $10 meal. Back in the old days, you would have braved the elements -- or learned to plan ahead. But those days are coming to an end, at least in Washington, D.C.