Transportation, the industry that deals with the movement of commodities and passengers from one place to another, has gone through several studies, researches, trials, and refinements to reach where it is now. One of the major milestones in the history of transportation was the steamboat in the year 1787. Prior to this, people relied on animal-drawn carts for their commute. Thereafter, major breakthroughs that led to the growth of the transportation industry were the invention of bicycles (early 19th century), motor cars (in the 1890s), trains (19th century), and aircrafts (1903). Today, the transportation sector has evolved to a level where vehicles can navigate and move without any human assistance.

On-demand robotic flying taxis and drone deliveries are years away from reality, but the U.S. Department of Transportation has removed at least one barrier to their operation. Responding to work by companies including Boeing Co., Intel Corp. and Uber Technologies Inc., the department on Friday said it would use the same process to consider approval of drone taxis that would carry passengers and cargo for hire as it does for approving traditional commercial air carriers. Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google unit are both developing drones to deliver products. Under U.S. law, the agency must certify that any business carrying people or cargo for hire is economically "fit, willing and able" to perform. Certifying an airline under those regulations can take years, but the DOT can exempt operators that are using smaller or mid-sized aircraft, it said in a notice set to be posted Monday in the Federal Register.

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 few 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. It's only February, and the most stupefyingly incredible display of autonomous robotics we'll see all year has almost certainly happened already: The center core didn't manage to make it back to the drone ship, but damn, that double landing of the boosters was epic, and that's not a word I use very often. Here's one more video of the boosters landing, which I think must have been taken from the top of a launch tower at KSC.

Airbus announced this week it successfully tested its flying taxi Vahana on Jan. 31 in Oregon. The test is a bit behind schedule. Airbus promised last January to test a prototype for an autonomous flying car by the end of 2017. The test comes less than two years after Airbus announced its autonomous flying car plans in September 2016 by introducing Project Vahana. The goal of the company's A³ division is to allow people to book rides using an app, like Uber or Lyft, but for flying cars instead.

You might be using your drone (or thinking about getting a drone) for epic vacation shots and ultra-romantic wedding videos, but you should be thinking bigger. What if, instead of taking pictures of you, your drone could help you monitor hundreds of acres of crops? And what if it could fix those flaws or water those crops as soon as it spotted them? Just as self-driving cars could fundamentally rearchitect the way cities work, drones have a disruptive potential that's hard to overstate. They could change the way people and goods are transported (where we're going, we don't need roads!), eliminate some jobs and create others, and upend the way we think about distance. Drones could bring the internet to people who don't have it, deliver food and medicine to people who need it, and cast a watchful eye over anyone and everyone. Drones are even inspiring new sports!

Dubai is living up to its promises. The Future City said in June it would test flying taxis this year, and it followed through on Monday. Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority announced it successfully tested autonomous taxi drones in the city. Volocopter, the German company that built the flying drones, said this week's test is the "first-ever public flight of an autonomous urban air taxi." The test, which did not include a passenger, successfully lifted, flew and landed the unmanned air taxi.

The EHang 184 autonomous aerial vehicle is unveiled at the EHang booth at CES International in January in Las Vegas. The drone is large enough to fit a human passenger. The EHang 184 autonomous aerial vehicle is unveiled at the EHang booth at CES International in January in Las Vegas. The drone is large enough to fit a human passenger. The idea: a drone taxi that can transport a single passenger for up to 23 minutes.