MIT researchers have unveiled a new way for consumers and businesses to take to the skies -- by designing and developing their own drones. The program, created by a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), is a prototype computer system (.PDF) which allows users to create a variety of drones. According to the lab, users can design, simulate and build custom drones, altering the size, shape, and structure depending on how they want their drones fabricated and their purpose -- which impacts on factors including payload tolerance, flight time, and battery life. To demonstrate the system, CSAIL created a range of unusual drones, including a five-rotor "pentacopter" and a rabbit-shaped "bunnycopter." MIT says the program could pave the way for businesses and consumers to develop new drones able to perform a wider variety of functions.

The new chief spokesman for the Islamic State group (also called ISIS) promised attacks on the United States, Russia, Europe and Iran in his first address to the terrorist outfit's followers, which was released Monday by ISIS's al-Furqan media division. The audio recording named Abu Hassan al-Muhajir as the successor to Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike near al-Bab, Syria, on Aug. 30. In a chilling message -- titled "For You Will Remember What I Tell You" -- aimed at the West and ISIS's regional adversaries, Muhajir called on the group's fighters to target its enemies. According to a translation by Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intelligence Group, Muhajir said in the message: "We will attack them in their own countries. Your operations make a difference … change the situation. Attack them in their markets, roads, clubs and any unexpected location and burn the ground under their feet."

Since the small UAVs were released for commercial use, drones have been a popular gift amongst tech enthusiasts, photographers, videographers and teens alike. Retailers from Best Buy to B&H have become completely saturated with a variety of drone makes and brands, making the selection process not so simple for those who are looking for the ideal model for someone on their shopping list. Whether you're shopping for a first-time drone user or looking for the best-ranked model of 2016, there is a selection of drones to search for by category for the holiday season. Best Drones Under $200: While these models likely won't be as durable as, say a Phantom 4, moderately priced drones are great for someone who is just starting out with a drone or for someone who enjoys flying them for fun. The U45 Blue Jay WiFi FPV Quadcopter Drone received good reviews on Amazon as easy-to-use and good in-flight for its price.

Most of today's commercially available drones have four rotors and more or less look the same (other than that one that's foldable). So if you wanted to own a drone that had, say, five copters or a completely different design altogether, you'd probably have to make your own, which can be a really tedious process. If you don't know where to start customizing your flying masterpiece, MIT's new system could be your first stop. The institute's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)'s latest project is what it says is the first platform that lets you design, simulate and build your own drone. Through the project interface, you can pick your own propellers, rotors and rods from MIT's database, as well as determine the size, shape and structure of your device.

Top Gun pitted Maverick and Goose against the Iceman and Viper. At the UK Drones Show Championships at Birmingham NEC on Sunday, it was Saggy Nun and Collision who competed to be crowned the nation's fastest pilot of an unmanned flying vehicle. It was Collision, aka 22-year-old graduate trainee Brett Collis, who took the £1,000 prize in this new event in which pale young men sporting special goggles synched with flying cameras navigated an illuminated 3D obstacle course in the dark. FPV (first person view) drone racing is rapidly becoming a lucrative business: Sky Sports recently decided to show a US race series on its Mix channel and in March a 15-year-old British boy called Luke Bannister won $250,000 (£173,900) when he triumphed at the World Drone Prix in Dubai. Wearing his call sign on the back of his T-shirt, Collis explained how he graduated to drone racing from video games.

USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham takes a look at two new consumer drones: the Yuneec Breeze and Hover Camera Passport. LOS ANGELES -- So you want to buy a drone as a holiday gift. For the past few years, buyers were faced with a dilemma: splash out on a $1,000 drone that came with a video camera, a smart app and plenty of airborne functionality. Or spend near $100 for what was essentially a toy: learning to fly them was a challenge, and the camera optics, if they had any, were inferior. This year's crop of drones are easier to fly, smaller, cuter and can shoot sharp 4K-video footage in the air -- at prices near $500.

Having established that we are light years away from full artificial intelligence, and that true A.I. is an inevitable part of the present and future -- now what? What should we concern ourselves with next? Like any transformative technology, A.I. carries risks and presents challenges along several dimensions, with the most complex and urgent issue being its liability and accountability. While science fiction has focused on the existential threat of A.I. to humans, researchers at Google's parent company, Alphabet, and those from Amazon, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft are teaming up to focus on the ethical challenges that A.I. will bring. People with knowledge on A.I. are no longer worried about the kind of scenarios where machines take over the world in doomsday fashion.

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. Back in June, IHMC posted a video of ATLAS walking on the edges of rotated cinder block all placed in a line. This latest video shows the robot walking on the edges of cinder blocks that have also been rotated in the horizontal plane, giving the robot's feet less surface area to work with: There's one more dimension to add before ATLAS will be walking on randomly positioned cinder blocks, and we're expecting to see the real robot handling point contacts soon as well.

Is this Amazon's top-secret delivery drone? Aircraft is thought to be a prototype of Amazon's delivery drone Amazon has a 500,000 square foot warehouse in Peterborough The Seattle-based company wants to use drones to deliver packages to people's homes in under 30 minutes Aircraft is thought to be a prototype of Amazon's delivery drone The Seattle-based company wants to use drones to deliver packages to people's homes in under 30 minutes Some outlets claim the footage is the first time a prototype Amazon drone has been spotted, but similar pictures were revealed earlier this year. New video footage has surfaced showing a drone flying above a field in Cambridgeshire. The aircraft is thought to be a prototype of Amazon's new delivery drone Apple warns 90% of'official' iPhone cables and chargers... Are you affected? WhatsApp will stop running on MILLIONS of... Meet'Baby Boom': The supersonic passenger airliner that can...

Just as ATMs changed banking and computers took over the home and workplace, robots and artificial intelligence are going to transform a bunch of industries over the next decade. By 2025, a machine may be putting together your driverless car in a factory with no human oversight. A robot maid could be cleaning up after you at home, and your financial advisor might be a computer investing for you automatically. And with at least 90 countries operating unmanned aerial vehicles, the wars of the future may increasingly be fought with "drone" aircraft. These are just some of the interesting -- and sometimes scary -- predictions to come from a 300-page report released by Merrill Lynch in November, which estimates the global market for robots and AI will grow from $28 billion to more than $150 billion just five years from now.