Federal agencies are scrambling to address a surge in the use of consumer drones as the unmanned aircraft crowd the airspace above critical sites, posing a threat to public safety and national security. The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are developing a joint national air-traffic-control system for low-flying drones. The Department of Homeland Security is testing technologies to detect small drones favored by consumers, and the Pentagon is researching methods to knock them out of the sky. Reports of drone sightings around airports are pouring into the FAA at a rate of more than 100 a month. Commercial pilots flying into and out of Los Angeles International Airport have reported increased sightings of drones near their flight path, with 23 sightings reported to the control tower so far this year, according to an airport official.

Delivery drones are real and they're operating on a national level, but they're not dropping off impulse purchases, and some of the most important applications are not in the United States. Zipline, a Bay Area startup, inked a deal with the government of Rwanda in 2016 and now uses small, autonomous planes to deliver medical supplies, and in particular blood, to rural communities across the African country. "It's a pretty cool paradigm shift for people who think all technological revolution is going on in US, and it'll trickle down to poor countries," says Zipline CEO, Keller Rinaudo, presenting his vision for drone deliveries on stage at the WIRED25 summit in San Francisco on Monday. "This is the opposite of that." Amazon created an internet-wide buzz when it announced it wanted to start delivering online shopping via drone, in a 60 Minutes interview in 2013.

With the push of a button, 300 drones ascend from a ground station and float over a nearby lake. You can't see them at first--it's well after sundown--but you can hear them falling into formation. The music starts, the drones light up, and the choreography begins. That's the hope for both Disney and Intel, anyway, as they prepare to launch previews of their "Starbright Holidays" extravaganza in Orlando. The drones are Intel's new Shooting Star quadcopters, and while this isn't Intel's biggest air show--the company synced up 500 of them earlier this year in Sydney--it will be the first implementation in which Disney's imagineers helped guide the production.

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 two 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. This RHex dance contest was filmed in 2013, as part of the Philadelphia Science Festival. More isn't always better, but with glowy flying drones, it definitely is: If you do the math (and the math is simple and exponential), by 2020 Intel will be flying 312,500 drones, which is a VGA display.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator franchise painted a dystopian picture of the robotic future In the James Cameron blockbuster The Terminator and its follow up sequels, the world was ruled by machines. Flying robots patrolled the skies even as land-based vehicles with minds of their own trundled along on the ground below. But thankfully, instead of trying to wipe out humanity, these drones may possibly soon be an indispensable component of our lives: building skyscrapers using 3D printing technology; transporting cargo across town; crop spraying; or helping find people trapped in buildings. Lockheed Martin's K-Max is a full size, unmanned helicopter, capable of both autonomous and remote-controlled operations. Previously deployed in combat zones, it is now increasingly being used for civilian applications, from fire fighting, to heavy lifting and oil drilling.

In the James Cameron blockbuster The Terminator and its follow up sequels, the world was ruled by machines. Flying robots patrolled the skies while land-based vehicles with minds of their own trundled along on the ground below. But thankfully, instead of trying to wipe out humanity, these drones could soon be an indispensable component of our lives: building skyscrapers using 3D printing technology; transporting cargo across town; crop spraying; or helping find people trapped in buildings. Lockheed Martin's K-Max is a full size, unmanned helicopter, capable of both autonomous and remote-controlled operations. Previously deployed in combat zones, it is now increasingly being used for civilian applications, from fire fighting, to heavy lifting and oil drilling.