A drone boat which can patrol the English Channel and track migrants on 12-hour missions is being trialled for Special Forces during a massive robot war games exercise. Yesterday it took part in the Royal Navy's robotic Unmanned Warrior exercise, the biggest ever war game using more than 50 types of drones off the UK coast. The inflatable P950 boat - of which a manned version is already in service and is used by elite troops - can be driven both manually by a remote control and also in an autonomous mode. Using a remote control with a joystick, troops on a ships miles away or on land can tell it where to go and have a live 360 degree angle of what the boat sees. Or they can put it in autonomous mode and just give the boat a destination, and the boat will navigate itself avoiding any obstacles it comes into contact with. In the future it could be equipped with weaponry to help with mine-hunting.

Some Washington, D.C., residents may soon be sharing the streets with Starship Technologies' delivery robots. Back in June, Washington became the first U.S. city to approve a pilot program of the ground-based delivery robots. Among some restrictions, the D.C. Council bill specifies that PPDs, or personal delivery devices, must not operate above 10 miles per hour, must weigh less than 50 pounds without cargo, and must obey all traffic and pedestrian signs and signals. Starship Technologies' bot is equipped to follow all of these guidelines. It weighs around 40 pounds and is capable of carrying about three filled shopping bags while rolling along at a safe speed of four miles per hour.

In a warehouse outside of Kigali, Rwanda, 15 drones sit waiting to receive a message. When the text comes in, one loads up and zips off into the sky – on a mission to save a life. Today, the government of Rwanda announced an emergency drone delivery service. These drones will make up to 150 trips per day, carrying blood supplies to clinics in need. Rwanda has relatively good infrastructure in some places, but in others it can be unreliable, says Moz Siddiqui at the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), one of the partners in the project, along with UPS and California drone company Zipline.

A year or so ago a new type of drone hit the (preorder) market. It was the self-flying camera drone – a device that promised to combine camera and AI technology to create a drone that you could essentially throw in the air to follow you around and take photos and videos. Some of these drones include Snap, Lily, Staaker and Hover. Most of these companies have raised tens of millions of dollars in either equity or preorders, but have taken a while to actually ship a product. But today Hover is announcing that its first camera drone – named Passport – is going on sale today for 549 – a 50 discount on its eventual retail price of 599.

Foldability is all the hype in the drone world these days, as is the case with the GoPro Karma and the DJI Mavic. But before these two were announced, we already heard about Zero Zero Robotics' Hover Camera 4K drone that is truly foldable and also fully enclosed -- in the sense that you can grab hold it any way you want without getting cut by the propellers, plus you're less likely to cause havoc in a room. Today, we bring you the good news that this nifty little machine -- under the new name "Passport" -- is finally launching for 549. For those who aren't already familiar, the Passport is an ultra-lightweight and ultra-compact quadcopter powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon Flight platform. It comes with a 13-megapixel still camera that can shoot 4K video, and there's a foldable carbon-fiber enclosure for the propellers -- the drone is about the size of a VHS cassette tape when folded, if you know what that is.

A sensor due for launch early next year allows small drones to sense and avoid obstacles with the aid of quantum film. The drone revolution could see fleets of uncrewed aerial vehicles crisscrossing cities delivering pizza, cleaning windows and inspecting infrastructure. But this will only be possible if they can avoid trees, buildings and other hazards autonomously while flying at speed. InVisage Technologies of Menlo Park, California, has built a low-cost sensor that can rapidly detect obstacles up to 20 metres away, using a technique called structured light. The SML-20 projects laser dots that are distorted by any object they strike, allowing the sensor to infer the location and distance of obstacles ahead.

You could call it a demonstration of the proliferation of drone use with frightening possibilities. Last week's attack in northern Iraq in which a small drone exploded killing two Peshmerga fighters and badly wounding two members of the French special forces, marks something of an innovation in modern warfare. The US launched the first armed drone attack back in October 2001. Since then the use of armed drones has been the preserve of the most sophisticated military actors in the world. Israel and the US had the early technological lead with Russia and China rapidly developing their own drone industries.

FILE- In this March 1, 2013 file photo, anti-Syrian President Bashar Assad protesters hold the Jabhat al-Nusra flag, as they shout slogans during a demonstration, at Kafranbel town, in Idlib province, northern Syria. Insurgent groups like Hezbollah and the Islamic State group in Syria have learned how to weaponize surveillance drones and use them against each other, adding a new twist to the country's civil war, a U.S. military official and others say. FILE- In this March 1, 2013 file photo, anti-Syrian President Bashar Assad protesters hold the Jabhat al-Nusra flag, as they shout slogans during a demonstration, at Kafranbel town, in Idlib province, northern Syria. Insurgent groups like Hezbollah and the Islamic State group in Syria have learned how to weaponize surveillance drones and use them against each other, adding a new twist to the country's civil war, a U.S. military official and others say. WASHINGTON (AP) -- French and Kurdish forces in northern Iraq were attacked by an exploding drone, the Pentagon said Wednesday, adding a new worry to the wars in Iraq and Syria as militant groups learn to weaponize their store-bought drones.

FILE- In this March 1, 2013 file photo, anti-Syrian President Bashar Assad protesters hold the Jabhat al-Nusra flag, as they shout slogans during a demonstration, at Kafranbel town, in Idlib province, northern Syria. Insurgent groups like Hezbollah and the Islamic State group in Syria have learned how to weaponize surveillance drones and use them against each other, adding a new twist to the country's civil war, a U.S. military official and others say. FILE- In this March 1, 2013 file photo, anti-Syrian President Bashar Assad protesters hold the Jabhat al-Nusra flag, as they shout slogans during a demonstration, at Kafranbel town, in Idlib province, northern Syria. Insurgent groups like Hezbollah and the Islamic State group in Syria have learned how to weaponize surveillance drones and use them against each other, adding a new twist to the country's civil war, a U.S. military official and others say. WASHINGTON (AP) -- Militant groups like Hezbollah and the Islamic State group have learned how to weaponize surveillance drones and use them against each other and coalition forces, adding a new twist to the wars in Iraq and Syria, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

FILE- In this March 1, 2013 file photo, anti-Syrian President Bashar Assad protesters hold the Jabhat al-Nusra flag, as they shout slogans during a demonstration, at Kafranbel town, in Idlib province, northern Syria. Insurgent groups like Hezbollah and the Islamic State group in Syria have learned how to weaponize surveillance drones and use them against each other, adding a new twist to the country's civil war, a U.S. military official and others say. FILE- In this March 1, 2013 file photo, anti-Syrian President Bashar Assad protesters hold the Jabhat al-Nusra flag, as they shout slogans during a demonstration, at Kafranbel town, in Idlib province, northern Syria. Insurgent groups like Hezbollah and the Islamic State group in Syria have learned how to weaponize surveillance drones and use them against each other, adding a new twist to the country's civil war, a U.S. military official and others say. WASHINGTON (AP) -- Militant groups like Hezbollah and the Islamic State group have learned how to weaponize surveillance drones and use them against each other, adding a new twist to Syria's civil war, a U.S. military official and others say.