Gab Scanu works alone, with a special operating licence for his UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority in Australia. The 20-year-old's drone photography shows a new perspective on well-known locations such as Sydney's Bondi beach, Mona Vale and other famous coastlines on the country's east coast. He has also travelled abroad and shot the LA coast at Malibu. The son of a cinematographer, Scanu has inherited a keen eye for photographic composition, capturing both the dramatic and the picturesque qualities of the Australian summer experience. He has developed a unique style and feel, using a combination of post production and drone technology to capture often never-before-seen landscape views.

Quadcopter drones are great for aerial photography, racing, and backing up Lady Gaga during the Super Bowl halftime show. But puny propellers don't cut it for serious jobs, which is why military missions and humanitarian aid drops use unmanned aerial drones that resemble airplanes. Fixed-wing drones can fly further and carry more. The trouble is, winged aircraft can't takeoff or land vertically like quadcopters, and the hybrid machines that combine the utility of wings and the ease of quads tend to be complex and expensive. Further compounding the challenge, fixed-wing drones need runaways, which you don't often find in the remote locations where drones are most useful.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has made a system that can catch drones mid-flight. Instead of risking damage when drones need to land in battlefields or on US Navy Ships, the DARPA SideArm capture system can retrieve drones up to 1100 pounds (500 kg) in weight. The system can fit in a shipping container and can be set up and operated by two to four people, enabling the SideArm to be portable. In December 2016, the system was tested with a 400-pound (181 kg) Lockheed Martin Fury Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) drone. Aurora Flight Sciences, who tested the SideArm, accelerated the drone to speeds that it would fly at using an external catapult.

Lady Gaga's incredible Super Bowl halftime show was due in part to Intel's fleet of 300 drones that helped create her dazzling performance. As the Dancing in the Dark hitmaker opened up the show, hundreds of drones soared behind her, flying high into formation to create stunning visuals over the Houston skyline. Intel was behind the stunning pre-recorded art display that transformed bobs of lights into a glittering flag and shimmering stars during the show on Sunday night. Lady Gaga's incredible Super Bowl halftime show was due in part to Intel's fleet of 300 drones that helped create her dazzling performance over the Houston skyline on Sunday night The project, dubbed Shooting Stars, was first used in a three-week run at Disney World over the holiday season. They are all controlled by a single operating system, reported Tech Crunch.

Your FedEx package might someday be delivered by a robot. Rob Carter, FedEx's chief information officer, says the shipping giant is considering small vehicles that could drive around neighborhoods and make deliveries without human drivers. Carter is responsible for setting the technology agenda across FedEx's various operating companies, including its planes-and-trucks Express shipping service and office-and-home Ground delivery service, which operate in 220 countries. The investments FedEx makes in AI and robotics technologies could shape the multi-trillion-dollar logistics market, affecting everything from the way people send and receive parcels to the global movement of large fleets of vehicles. Fedex is working with the startup Peloton Technology, whose semi-autonomous technology electronically links trucks into small caravan groups called platoons.

Former NASA engineer Mark Moore will now be working on Uber's flying car project, Uber Elevate. SAN FRANCISCO -- George Jetson, your ride is on its way. Uber has just hired a NASA expert to build out its vision for flying cars Monday. Mark Moore, a 30-year veteran of the space agency with expertise in using electric motors to get a vehicle airborne, will help the ride-hailing giant execute on an expansive white paper it released last fall on developing VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) vehicles. "Uber continues to see its role as a catalyst to the growing developing VTOL ecosystem," Nikhil Goel, Uber's head of product for advanced programs, said in a statement.

Technology repeats itself, first as art and then as advertising. When computers are ubiquitous, the need to showcase their potential in new and novel ways leads to such things as the specially-designed robotic entertainers. Each one of Intel's "Shooting Star Drones" weighs under 10 ounces, can fly for up to 20 minutes, and flies at around 6 mph. Yet it's the computing that really stands out: the whole swarm of 300 flying robots are controlled by one pilot and one computer, with a second pilot on hand in case of emergencies. Coordinating flying swarms has applications far beyond just entertainment.

Lady Gaga's Super Bowl LI halftime show on Sunday had something many viewers had never seen before: Hundreds of light-emitting drones flying in a synchronized pattern to show the American flag and, later, the Pepsi logo. How'd they pull that off? It's thanks to an Intel technology called Shooting Star, which lets programmers design airborne light shows with swarms of drones. Here's more on how Shooting Star works, via Wired: Each drone is about a foot long square, weighs just over eight ounces, and sports a plastic and foam body to soften inadvertent impacts. They aren't as flashy as consumer quadcopters, which is just as well, because you're not supposed to notice them.

With so much discussion over foreign policy and immigration concerns from Muslim-majority nations after the inauguration of Donald Trump, there might be some confusion about how the U.S. is fighting terrorism in the Middle East. The U.S. may not be in a direct war with anyone other than the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, but there is still a military presence in multiple countries carried over from previous administrations. The number of combat troops has dipped due to drone warfare, but President Trump, who campaigned on being tougher on ISIS, has said he would be willing to send up to 30,000 troops to Iraq and Syria. However, he inherited a military presence in not just those two countries, but other hotspots, as well. Just days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress and President George W. Bush authorized the use of military force to overthrow the Taliban.

We saw Amazon's brief and disgusting teaser for its delivery drones, China becomes the biggest producer of solar energy in the world, Windows Cloud (unrelated) and how Elon Musk scratches his Minecraft itch. The country doubled its solar capacity last year. China might not have the image of a clean energy champion, with air pollution issues and a continued dependence on coal power, but it's also moving forward with renewable energy. The country's National Energy Administration has revealed that its solar energy production more than doubled in 2016, hitting 77.42 gigawatts by the end of the year. That said, it only covers just one percent of the country's total energy output.