Remember when quadcopter drones juggled balls and formed up into a Star Trek logo? That seems downright quaint compared to what we just saw at Lady Gaga's elaborately produced Super Bowl halftime show. During her first number, 300 Intel drones formed the shape of an American flag, punctuating the singer's wire-assisted fall to the stage below. Ok... Gaga using Drones for the synchronized sky lighting was impressive #SuperBowl #PepsiHalftime pic.twitter.com/SIxuMp3OT1 The "Shooting Star" drones Intel introduced last year are a foot across and weigh just eight ounces, thanks to a foam body designed to soften impacts.

The leader of al-Qaida in the Arabain Peninsula (AQAP), Qassim al-Rimi, released an audio recording in which he reportedly called President Donald Trump the "White House's new fool" while speaking about a recent deadly U.S. raid against the group in Yemen which killed 25 civilians, including 11 women and children. In the recording, which was released late Saturday, al-Rimi addressed his followers, saying: "The White House's new fool has received a painful blow at your hands in his first outing on your land." The raid took place Jan. 29 and the recording claimed many U.S. soldiers were also killed and wounded during the operation. It was President Trump's first counter-terrorism offensive that killed more than a dozen terrorists and also U.S. Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer William Ryan Owens. The casualties included the 8-year old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American al-Qaida leader who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011.

HOUSTON, TX - FEBRUARY 05: Lady Gaga performs during the Pepsi Zero Sugar Super Bowl 51 Halftime Show at NRG Stadium on February 5, 2017 in Houston, Texas. Lady Gaga seemed to kick off her energetic and decidedly aerodynamic halftime show at Super Bowl LI tonight perched atop NRG Stadium, with the lights of Houston--and then suddenly hundreds of synchronous, technicolor supernovas--glittering behind her. In fact, USA TODAY explains, the prima diva filmed the cold open to her show some days earlier with the help of 300 Intel Shooting Star drones and a game day flight plan that was a year and a half in the making. The cloud-capable quadcopters have been performing feats of unison since 2015 under the direction of Intel's drone division, and the Super Bowl spectacular demonstrated their capacity as "[a] way of merging art and technology," according to the human team. The group says live shows with drones could feasible be in the near future, too (including, but not limited to, the fireworks-based ones Disney is currently exploring). Especially so, according to Intel Drone's Natalie Cheung, as opinions toward having drones in our midst start to warm up.

The game is over, but Amazon managed to stand out with a brief (if also disgusting) 10-second spot. Unfortunately, other than the voice-controlled shopping via Echo, it needed a disclaimer that "Prime Air isn't available in some states (or any really). Yet" but Prime Air is looking surprisingly realistic these days. Until then, though, it may be easier to prune your Super Bowl party guest list carefully.

The best Super Bowl halftime shows leave indelible memories, be it a notorious wardrobe malfunction, that goofy Left Shark, or every last second of Beyoncé's two appearances. It's too soon to say whether anything Lady Gaga did tonight will resonate, but at least she offered something new: An army of dancing drones, ducking and dodging over the Houston skyline, transforming from stars to a fluttering flag. It's probably first time you've seen 300 drones flying in formation, but it's almost certainly not the last. The technology underpinning the Intel Shooting Star drone system is fascinating in and of itself, but its potential applications are even more so. The same drones that accompanied Lady Gaga will one day revolutionize search-and-rescue, agriculture, halftime shows, and more.

Drones and airports usually go together like oil and water, but you can't say that about Atlanta's air hub. The city has formed a partnership with 3DR, Autodesk and engineering firm Atkins that has drones mapping Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport as part of a planned expansion. The key to making it work was Site Scan, 3DR's autonomous data capturing tech. The drones could capture 2D mosaics and 3D point scans while staying well away from the airliners -- no mean feat when they're flying between runways at the busiest airport in the world (over 100 million passengers per year). If anything, the biggest challenge was getting the green light from extra-wary FAA regulators.

UK: UK-based startups also accounted for 4% of global deal share in 2016. To name a few, Cambridge Medical Robotics raised $20M in Series A from investors including ABB Technology and Escala Capital; social robot Olly raised $10M in Series A from Lightning Capital and Alliance Capital Ventures; and educational robot-building startup tio was seed-funded by the Kickstarter Accelerator. Smart Money VCs: CRV backed Israel-based automated drone startup Airobotics in a $28.5M combined Series A and B round in Q2'16. Battery Ventures backed another Israel-based autonomous drone startup, Dronomy. Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital China backed previously mentioned drone company DJI Innovations.

One of the problems with bats, if you're a robotics expert, is that they have so many joints. That's what robotics researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Caltech quickly learned when they set out to build a robot version of the flying mammal. "Bats use more than 40 active and passive joints, [along with] the flexible membranes of their wings," Soon-Jo Chung of Caltech told Popular Mechanics. "It's impractical, or impossible, to incorporate [all 40] of these joints in the robot's design." Or as biologist Dan Riskin of the University of Toronto put it to PBS, "bats are ridiculously stupid in terms of how complex they are."

February 3, 2017 --The dark knight could be getting a gear upgrade, thanks to a three-person robotics team. Anyone who's seen bats wheeling and swooping at dusk as they hunt for insects knows their unparalleled maneuverability. This fact hasn't escaped the notice of roboticists, who frequently take inspiration from natural sources, but bat-wing complexity has proved challenging to mimic. On Wednesday, a team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the California Institute of Technology published a paper outlining the construction of one of the most bat-like flying robots yet. Bats put birds to shame in terms of agility and efficiency, say the researchers.

When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight, 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. He recently told MIT Technology Review about some of FedEx's emerging technology initiatives in artificial intelligence and robotics. The investments FedEx makes in these 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.