Drone Defence Services and the University of Nottingham will develop sensor technology to track aircraft. By monitoring all aircraft, Drone Defence aims to prevent drone misuse and enable drones to safely share the sky with other aircraft.

French inventor Frank Zapata grabbed headlines around the world this summer when he flew his hoverboard across the English channel from Pas de Calais, France, to the famous white cliffs of Dover. But Bay Area commuters may soon do Zapata one better by skimming above San Francisco Bay on autonomous, single-passenger drones being developed by a Peninsula start-up company with ties to Google. The automated drones are electrically powered, capable of vertical takeoff and landing, and would fly 10 feet above the water at 20 mph along a pre-determined flight path not subject to passenger controls. The drones' rotors are able to shift from vertical to horizontal alignment for efficient forward movement after takeoff. The company behind all this, three-year-old Kitty Hawk Corp., has personal financial backing from Google founder Larry Page, now CEO of Google's parent, Alphabet, who has long been interested in autonomous forms of transportation.

Ordnance survey has unveiled a solar-powered drone that is capable of flying for 90 days at a time without needing to come back to Earth and will be used to provide higher quality images of Earth. It will circle at approximately 67,000 ft (20,400m) above the ground and snap images to sell to organisations and businesses. First tests of the Astigan unmanned aerial vehicle are scheduled to take place before the end of 2019. Ordnance Survey is the majority stakeholder in Astigan, a firm based in Bridgwater, Somerset. The company works in the same factory that was once home to Facebook's Aquila internet drone project.

Google has released a set of principles to guide its work in artificial intelligence, making good on a promise to do so last month following controversy over its involvement in a Department of Defense drone project. The document, titled "Artificial Intelligence at Google: our principles," does not directly reference this work, but makes clear that the company will not develop AI for use in weaponry. It also outlines a number of broad guidelines for AI, touching issues like bias, privacy, and human oversight. While the new principles forbid the development of AI weaponry, they state that Google will continue to work with the military "in many other areas." Speaking to The Verge, a Google representative said that had these principles been published earlier, the company would likely not have become involved in the Pentagon's drone project, which used AI to analyze surveillance footage.

The Gauteng department of infrastructure development has launched a programme using drones to monitor the progress of projects across the province. The initiative -- launched in Etwatwa‚ Ekurhuleni‚ on Monday -- uses drones in tandem with the nerve centre of the department‚ called Lutsinga Infrastructure House. It combines human intelligence‚ business intelligence and now also artificial intelligence to ensure that the entire value chain of project delivery is efficient and that projects are delivered in time‚ within cost and at the right quality. "It is possible for the public sector to be efficient and to be productive in what we do and that is exactly what we are demonstrating today. One of the things that we have looked at is that globally infrastructure performance is lagging behind other industries. Therefore over the past two years we've been working hard to introduce efficiencies across the value chain of development‚" said infrastructure development MEC Jacob Mamabolo.

Google owner Alphabet's subsidiary research company, X, has shut down its project aimed at building a solar-powered drone intended to bring internet access to remote areas. The project, which stemmed from an acquisition Google made in April 2014 of New Mexico-based Titan Aerospace, was deemed by X to be less promising than a competing attempt to use lightweight weather balloons for the same purpose. "The team from Titan was brought into X in late-2015. We ended our exploration of high-altitude UAVs for internet access shortly after," an X spokesperson said. "By comparison, at this stage the economics and technical feasibility of Project Loon [its high-altitude balloon project] present a much more promising way to connect rural and remote parts of the world. Many people from the Titan team are now using their expertise as part of other high-flying projects at X, including Loon and Project Wing."

The latest Google drones have just started taking flight in the real world. But the team behind the technology is slowing down, trimming headcount and shelving initiatives as the experimental unit becomes the latest target of tightening budgets across parent company Alphabet Inc. Project Wing, a unit of Alphabet's X research lab, nixed a partnership with coffee giant Starbucks Corp., according to people familiar with the decision. Following the departure of project leader Dave Vos in October, the unit also froze hiring and began asking some staff to seek jobs elsewhere in the company, according to some of those people. They asked not to be identified speaking about private company moves. The decisions are part of a broader Alphabet effort to rein in spending and try to turn more experimental projects from loss-making risky bets into real businesses.

Alphabet Inc. pushed out two managers on its drone-delivery project amid infighting on its team, according to people familiar with the situation, casting the program's future in uncertainty and marking the latest setback for a Google sister company. Alphabet, Google's parent, has been developing delivery drones in its research arm since 2012 with the hopes of transforming logistics. But the drone project--dubbed Project Wing--has had a bumpy ride, with its original head departing in 2014. Alphabet last month pushed out the project's chief, Dave Vos, and its top commercial executive, Sean Mullaney, in large part because of conflict between the group's engineers and its commercial team, according to the people familiar with the matter. It also issued notices to several other Project Wing workers, giving them 90 days to find other positions within Alphabet, one former employee said.

Project Wing, a subdivision of Google's parent company Alphabet, will use self-guiding drones to deliver Chipotle food at Virginia Tech this fall. The drones are capable of both flying and hovering on pre-planned routes, avoiding hazards as they go. Dave Vos, head of Project Wing, told Bloomberg that human pilots will be there to take over in case of emergency, as is required by the FAA. This specific experiment is novel, because "it's the first time that we're actually out there delivering stuff to people who want that stuff," Vos told Bloomberg. The drones will launch from a food truck, make the delivery, and return to the truck as a "home base."