UC San Diego is creating an outdoor site where it can test fly unmanned aerial vehicles, which are rapidly coming into common use by everyone from police investigating crime scenes to scientists looking for archaeological remains. The aerodrome will be a net cage that will be 30 feet high and roughly 50 feet long and wide, making it similar to a facility that's being built at the University of Michigan, a leader in drone research. San Diego chipmaker Qualcomm gave UC San Diego $200,000 to create the flight center, which is meant to help promote the school's quickly expanding research in robotic systems. The campus recently announced that it will begin testing driverless vehicles on university roads next year, using golf carts to deliver packages. The research will begin about the time that engineers start to extensively use the aerodrome.

Qualcomm announced that it has purchased Dutch artificial intelligence research company Scyfer to boost its expertise in machine learning. The price was not disclosed. Scyfer has built artificial intelligence systems for companies in manufacturing, healthcare, finance and other industries. Founded in 2013, Scyfer is a spinoff of the University of Amsterdam. Professor Max Welling co-founded the company and will continue to work both as a professor and an artificial intelligence researcher for Qualcomm.

Is auto lending becoming a breeding ground for fraud -- much like what occurred with mortgage loans during the housing bubble of the mid-2000s? Tim Grace and Frank McKenna, two San Diego fraud analytics software veterans, think there is increasing fraud risk in auto lending, fueled in part by a surge in subprime loans. They've co-founded PointPredictive, a start-up that taps machine learning algorithms to spot fishy loans. Joe Jackson, former head of Wells Fargo Ventures, is also a co-founder. The 13-employee firm said Wednesday it has raised its first round of venture funding from San Francisco-based Mosaik Partners.

Innocuous though they may seem, emojis, or the symbol-based form of communication -- such as hearts, crowns and cherries -- have been hijacked by those wishing to hawk sex trafficking services through online websites without detection. The link was recently uncovered by San Diego State University Information Systems Master's Program graduate Jessica Whitney and her thesis advisor Dr. Murray Jennex as they sought to further decode the language of sex traffickers, who communicate out in the open but in code -- particularly about underage victims -- in online dating forums offered by sites such as Craigslist and Backpage. Professor Jennex had worked with a different student two years ago to uncover common keywords used by online traffickers in ads, but he thought more could be done. The criminal behavior is difficult to measure yet widespread. Officials with the National Human Trafficking Hotline said that more than 7,500 cases of human trafficking were reported in 2016, with more than 1,300 cases reported in California alone.

Back in 1995, the NavLab 5 team at Carnegie Mellon University launched an autonomous vehicle on a trip from Pittsburgh to San Diego. It averaged speeds above 60 mph. So if self-driving technology worked on a cross-country trip 22 years ago, why aren't roads filled with autonomous cars today? The reason is the technology remains closer to the research lab stage and is not ready for prime time, ay experts. Sensors must shrink, improve their range, particularly in bad weather, and become less expensive.