It's every college student's dream – airborne drones that deliver burritos to campus. Alphabet's Project Wing and Chipotle have teamed up for a pilot program that flies these stuffed tortillas to the students at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. The hybrid drones will fly to the delivery location from a Chipotle food truck, hover over the customer and lower the order down using a wire cable. Chipotle and Alphabet Inc.'s Project Wing have teamed up for a pilot program that flies these stuffed tortillas to the students at Virginia Tech. The drones will fly to the delivery location from a Chipotle food truck, hover overhead and lower the order down to the customer using a wire cable.

Google parent Alphabet Inc. plans this month to use drones to deliver burritos to a small number of staff and students at Virginia Tech, a limited test of the tech giant's ambitious plans to quicken deliveries with unmanned aircraft. In the tests, drones from Alphabet's research lab, X, will ferry burritos from a Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. CMG -0.49 % food truck to an official several hundred feet away, who will distribute the orders to waiting customers, Alphabet said. The flights will mark X's first drone deliveries in the U.S. to people who aren't Alphabet employees. Drone-delivery startup Flirtey Inc. delivered medicine to a rural health clinic last year, in another test. Alphabet said its test will entail a few hundred deliveries to students and staff from a nearby office building.

Three years ago, Jeff Bezos announced that drones are eventually going to deliver Amazon orders. In the past year, he brought out Amazon's Alexa artificial intelligence service, which understands speech well enough that you can say, "Alexa, I really need a waffle cone maker," and she'll put one in your Amazon online shopping cart, even though nobody needs a waffle cone maker. Both of these technologies--drones and cloud AI--are exciting today, yet still wobbly works in progress. But in coming years, Amazon or some other company is going to put them together. And that, finally, will evolve into a technology that could become as significant to humans as domesticated dogs.

Project Wing, part of Alphabet's X experimental laboratory, is testing the delivery of Chipolte burritos by drone on the Virginia Tech campus. SAN FRANCISCO -- No need to pinch yourself. This is not a dream. Google parent Alphabet really is delivering Chipotle burritos by drone. This month, a small group of hungry students and employees will get their burrito orders lowered on a winch from a hovering drone on the Virginia Tech campus, making the drone-delivered burrito of geeky fantasies a reality -- at least for a chosen few.

The drones, which are all approved under the FAA's new commercial guidelines, can fly autonomously but will have a human backup ready to take the controls if something goes awry. When a drone reaches the hungry customer on the other end of the delivery, it will hover in place while lowering the burrito payload to the ground using a winch. The project's engineers will be testing everything from the drone's navigation systems to customer satisfaction. After all, what good is a drone if it can only bring you a cold, mushy burrito? While the concept seems simple, the data gathered from the project will actually help the FAA design a new system of low-altitude air traffic control that will be necessary once drone deliveries start catching on in earnest.

Mercedes-Benz is experimenting with small cargo bots to carry cargo over that last, pesky mile to the customer, using a human-driven van to ferry the them over the previous stretch. The two kinds of bots, aerial and terrestrial, are being supplied by companies we've already written about. Matternet is providing its slick M2 quadcopter, several of which would perch on the van's roof. Starship Technologies is providing its six-wheel robot, eight of which can fit inside a van. The idea is that the man in the van--a Mercedes Sprinter--would load up the bots with their various payloads, take an optimized route from one customer to the next, and unleash the automatons.

Three military veterans once involved in the U.S. drone program have thrown their support behind a Yemeni man's legal fight to obtain details about why his family members were killed in a 2012 strike. The former soldiers' unusual decision to publicly endorse the lawsuit against President Obama and other U.S. officials adds another twist to Faisal bin Ali Jaber's four-year quest for accountability in the deaths of his brother-in-law and nephew, who he believes needlessly fell victim to one of the most lethal covert programs in U.S. history. The former enlisted service members told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a recent filing that they believe the 2012 drone strike serves as a case study of how mistakes frequently occur in the nation's targeted-killing program, where life-or-death decisions are based upon top-secret evidence. The veterans say they "witnessed a secret, global system without regard for borders, conducting widespread surveillance with the ability to conduct deadly targeted killing operations." Though the veterans did not disclose any personal knowledge of the strike that is alleged to have killed Jaber's relatives, they claim the military frequently labels the deaths of unknown victims as "enemy kills."

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The U.S. has been using drones more and more frequently since the Sept. 11 attacks. They have been highly effective on the battlefield, but have raised legal and ethical issues. The U.S. has been using drones more and more frequently since the Sept. 11 attacks. They have been highly effective on the battlefield, but have raised legal and ethical issues. Today in the skies over New Mexico, Air Force students are practicing for the kill.

DJI plans to optimize its DJI GO app to work with the Moverio glasses, which will simultaneously provide a first person view of what the drone's camera sees as well as allow the pilot to maintain a direct line of sight with the UAV itself. That way, you'll know exactly how close your Phantom 4 is to a tree without actually putting it into said tree. This partnership will also grant the Moverio BT-300's DJI certification so you'll be able to pick up a pair at the drone maker's website throughout the holiday season.