The Luftwaffe would use the doodlebugs to attack London, where actress Helen Mirren's parents lived during the war. "They were by far the worst because [as Mirren's mother told her] you would hear them coming over and if you heard the drone -- the buzz up there in the sky -- if you heard that noise stop, that's when it was dropping its load," said Mirren during a phone interview with The Huffington Post. "So you would just pray it went over your head." Mirren recalled this memory from her family's history as she was promoting her movie "Eye in the Sky," in which she plays a British colonel tasked with deciding whether to use a drone strike in Nairobi, Kenya. Her character has tracked the location of an extremist meeting, but must choose whether to take out the terrorists at the cost of killing a young girl who is selling bread right outside their headquarters.

As at least three major wildfires rage across the American southwest, the people tasked with controlling them are contending with an unusual problem beyond the flames themselves: Drones. Officials say that small personal drones are increasingly being spotted flying near or above wildfires, interfering with aircraft used for aerial firefighting and firefighter transport operations. Small drones operating near wildfires put those aircraft at risk of collision. It's unclear why people are flying drones near wildfires, but it's likely they're being used to record video footage of the blazes. Firefighters spotted two drones in their air crew's operating area on Wednesday in Arizona, the Arizona Republic reports.

"It's like a videogame, but more fun because you're outside," says Isaac Kantor, my 10-year old neighbor, as he buzzes a Parrot Airborne Cargo drone past my head. Kids can use ROXs to play pre-programmed video games outdoors. Geocaching uses a GPS device to search for and locate hidden items in public places. Geocaching, which is really nothing more than using any GPS device to search for and locate hidden items in public places, is a hobby that has been growing for decades.

In a patent awarded to Google today, the company outlined a theoretical strategy for ensuring that autonomous and remote-controlled robots in a warehouse facility aren't overloaded as they move cargo around the warehouse. As far as we're aware, Google hasn't said that it's working on any robots like the ones in the patent. It is working on humanoid robots, dog-like robots, robots with giant legs, robotic arms and even robots that can fly deliveries to you, but it's not shown to be working on robots that can carry cargo, or autonomous forklift robots, like those seen in this patent. The patent outlines a series of robots that could be used in a warehouse, and a system for controlling how quickly they move and accelerate to ensure that these bots can safely load cargo. According to the patent: "Example systems may involve automated loading and/or unloading of boxes and/or other objects, such as into storage containers or to and from delivery vehicles." In the theoretical situation described in the patent, robots that have been overloaded, or loaded improperly, may not move, or would move slowly, to ensure they don't tip over while trying to move their cargo.

It is the future of shipping - and there's not a single sailor on board. Rolls Royce has revealed planed for fleets of'drone ships' to ferry carry around the world - all controlled from a central'holodeck'. It believes an entirely unmanned ship could take to the seas by 2020. Rolls Royce said it has already begun testing the technology needed to make the ships a reality, and expected them to take to the sea by the end of the decade. Cameras would beam 360-degree views from the drone ship back to operators based in a virtual bridge.

Who do we become when we die? Our identities are such fragile, personally curated things: we go through life as children, then students and peers, and sometimes switch to a vocational preference. A person becomes farmer, shepherd, mechanic, soldier, baker, homemaker, brigand, or bandit, or backyard bomb-maker -- whichever strikes us by calling or necessity. People assume narrower identities, a lover for an afternoon, a wedding guest for a weekend. Perhaps it's the wrong wedding, the wrong place, the wrong people, and whatever mish-mash of identities, they end with a hellfire strike and a grim, clinical finality. The bodies become "military-age males," the rich matrixes of interwoven identities collapsed into two categories, a fatal guilt decided abroad in the moment of impact.

Drone supporters often say that strikes are effective, their targets aren't random and are not a recruiting tool for various armed groups. A look at the evidence, though, demonstrates otherwise. In this week's Reality Check, Mehdi Hasan explains why he believes that drone strikes are ineffective, inaccurate and unsuccessful. Follow UpFront on Twitter @AJUpFront and Facebook.

The fact that Catherine - who's learned that her ex-husband Theodore has taken up with Samantha, a honey-voiced Operating System who screens his emails, entertains his fantasies and sends his writing off to publishers - comes off as judgmental is testament to Jonze's filmmaking skills. But it's also proof of how deeply we've internalised the notion that artificial intelligence is an extension of male desires and that, really, few things may be hotter than the hard-to-nail promise of female servitude. As Laurie Penny writes in an April 2016 article in The New Statesman, the issue of whether or not robots are slaves designed to serve their masters or sentient beings with inner lives and autonomous instincts has long paralleled the questions we ask of women in the world. READ MORE: * New Zealand could become first country to use Domino's pizza delivery robot * Drones, self-drive cars and'car butler' in our near future * Professor hopes robots will take over the rehabilitation world * Robots could threaten up to half New Zealand's jobs in next 20 years * Robots fooling humans they love something that can't love them back: AI expert * Self-learning robot escapes Russian facility, disrupts traffic * New robot from Google shows off human-like qualities Robots may take on domestic tasks and give working mothers more time. From Metropolis, the 1927 Fritz Lang classic in which Maria, a cyborg whose sultry ways plunge the city and its workers into chaos (she's later burned at a stake) to Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, the hit 1997 spy film whose comely fembots are programmed to ensnare the bumbling Powers with his own libido, female robots are often cast as temptresses or destroyers, coincidentally enough, the same roles reserved for flesh-and-blood women.

While it may look like a natural phenomenon, this watery sinkhole is anything but. Named Covão do Conchos it is regarded as one of Portugal's top secret attractions. The mesmerising whirlpool, which has been caught in high definition by a circling drone, is the work of human engineering and can be found in an otherwise tranquil lake in Serra da Estrela Natural Park. People say the opening in Portugal's largest protected area looks like it's from an otherworldly dimension. However, it is far less mystical and far more fascinating.

This week, federal regulators rolled out new rules for unmanned flying vehicles, in a first step that helps pave the way for drones to start delivering packages to your door. But because of a federal no-fly zone, drones are prohibited in the D.C. area. So the nation's capital is finding a workaround. In a unanimous vote Thursday, the District of Columbia's city council gave the green light for an Estonian company to start testing its ground-based robot delivery technology right on the sidewalks. The move represents the first time ground-based drones have been approved for testing anywhere in the country, according to the company, Starship Technologies.