In the span of just a few years, drones have become instrumental in warfare. Conflicts in Ukraine, Iran, Nagorno-Karabakh, Sudan, and elsewhere have shown how autonomous vehicles have become a quintessential part of modern combat. It's a fact that Taiwan knows all too well. The island nation, fearing imminent invasion from China, has both the need, know-how, and industry necessary to build a robust and advanced drone program. Yet Taiwan, which has set an ambitious target of producing 180,000 drones per year by 2028, is struggling to create this industry from scratch.

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) - No longer a novelty, drones are becoming an everyday tool for more police and fire departments, new research has found. The number of public safety agencies with drones has more than doubled since the end of 2016, according to data collected by the Center for the Study of the Drone at New York's Bard College. The center estimated that just over 900 police, sheriff, fire and emergency agencies now have drones, with Texas, California, and Wisconsin leading the way, the study showed. While many law enforcement drone units are just getting started and are in place in just a fraction of the public safety agencies around the country, police and fire departments are continuing to find new uses for the remote-controlled aircraft. They're being deployed to take photos of car accidents, guide firefighters through burning buildings and search for missing people and murder suspects.

TOLEDO, OHIO – No longer a novelty, drones are becoming an everyday tool for more police and fire departments, new research has found. The number of public safety agencies with drones has more than doubled since the end of 2016, according to data collected by the Center for the Study of the Drone at New York's Bard College. The center estimated that just over 900 police, sheriff, fire and emergency agencies now have drones, with Texas, California, and Wisconsin leading the way, the study showed. While many law enforcement drone units are just getting started and are in place in just a fraction of the public safety agencies around the country, police and fire departments are continuing to find new uses for the remote-controlled aircraft. They're being deployed to take photos of car accidents, guide firefighters through burning buildings and search for missing people and murder suspects.

This year, Co.Design asked a handful of design firms to take on the moral dilemma of self-driving car decision-making: What does a car do when it has to choose between saving its passenger and saving a pedestrian? Their solutions included smart roads, flying airbags, and air traffic control-style systems. But the San Francisco-based design firm Box Clever is focusing on safety first. The studio imagines creating a new layer of public infrastructure in the form of security drones that can warn self-driving cars of things they can't see. Combined with the use of smart materials in cars themselves that can better absorb the impact of crashes, the studio's vision doesn't just apply to a world of autonomy–it could help make our streets safer for pedestrians right now.

If you're a drone pilot who doesn't wear an Air Force uniform, chances are your aircraft looks something like a square with four rotors, a battery, and maybe a camera. The classic quadcopter, after all, works just fine. Well, maybe because you want a drone with five rotors. Or you want to mount the camera on top of the drone, not below. Or you want a drone shaped like a rabbit because you quite like rabbits and why the heck not?

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. What you're not seeing here is the person on the other end of this, operating the robot remotely. I feel like there's a market for this sort of thing in stadiums.

Someday your home may need a drone landing pad. Whether its delivering packages or providing transport, drones are expected to play part of our lives in the coming years. Now, a new concept for a'Drone Tower' shows how we could shape our buildings to accommodate the rise in UAVs. As drones become more popular, eventually they will be incorporated into our homes, and blocks of flats will need to accommodate ways for the aircraft to land. A new concept for a'Drone Tower' shows how we could shape our buildings Charles Bombarier, a mechanical engineer in Quebec, Canada is founder of the blog Imaginactive, where he showcases far-fetched future design concepts.

Battlefields of the future could enable armies to respond quickly to threats by'growing' unmanned aircraft in the field. In a futuristic vision of warfare, British defence firm BAE Systems has described its plans for a radical new concept for developing new prototypes of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Called the Chemputer, its developers claim the concept could provide a significant advantage by slashing production times from years to just a matter of weeks. Grow your own drones: British defence firm BAE Systems has announced its plans to develop a'Chemputer' in which prototypes could be'grown' rapidly (concept illustrated). The'Chemputer' could provide a significant advantage by slashing production times from years to a matter of weeks.