This paper addresses a new semantic multi-robot planning problem in uncertain and dynamic environments. Particularly, the environment is occupied with non-cooperative, mobile, uncertain labeled targets. These targets are governed by stochastic dynamics while their current and future positions as well as their semantic labels are uncertain. Our goal is to control mobile sensing robots so that they can accomplish collaborative semantic tasks defined over the uncertain current/future positions and labels of these targets. We express these tasks using Linear Temporal Logic (LTL). We propose a sampling-based approach that explores the robot motion space, the mission specification space, as well as the future configurations of the labeled targets to design optimal paths. These paths are revised online to adapt to uncertain perceptual feedback. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that addresses semantic mission planning problems in uncertain and dynamic semantic environments. We provide extensive experiments that demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method

Don't you want to talk less and smile more? According to the company who literally invented the smart home voice assistant, talking to them is just a temporary stage. Soon, they'll "just know" what we want and do it for us, automatically. To prove this theory, the consumer technology giant showed off a slew of new gadgets at its annual hardware event last week, including a security drone for your home, an Echo speaker that moves, and significant advances in the artificial intelligence capabilities of Alexa. This vision of an "ambient home" as opposed to a command drive home outlined by Amazon's Senior Vice President David Limp at the event, has been the roadmap for home automation for decades. The true smart home doesn't just react to commands, it is predictive and proactive, determining what you need, when you need it.

Ring, the Amazon-owned home security business, introduced a flying camera on Thursday that may excite home-surveillance fans but is almost certain to rankle privacy advocates. The $250 drone, called Ring Always Home Cam, is among a slew of products unveiled during Amazon's invitation-only online hardware event. The drone is small and light, with a high-definition camera, and it can automatically fly on preset paths to specific spots in your home, streaming video to your smartphone of what it sees along the way. Users can set up paths for the drone via a smartphone app, or if the drone detects motion in a part of your home it can fly on its own to that spot and take video of what's going on. Set for release next year, the drone is meant for indoor use only, and it can be set to work with the Ring Alarm system so that it will fly a preset route if the alarm is triggered.

Ring knows that there are only so many places in your home that you want to put a camera, and sometimes that isn't enough. That's why the company is building the Ring Always Home Cam, a small drone that can patrol your home to keep watch over your stuff. As well as offering an extra layer of security, you can use the device to check specific worries, like if you left a window open or the burners on. Naturally, the Always Home Cam integrates with the wider Ring ecosystem, and will fly a patrol whenever its sensors are triggered in Away mode. You won't be able to manually control the craft, but can watch it go about its business on a live feed via the Ring app.

Some say the best way to catch a criminal is to be one-step ahead, but a California startup believes it is better to be one-step above. Aptonomy has developed a self-flying drone that it claims is much cheaper than employing humans, and more effective than cameras and alarms. Dubbed'flying security guard', the drone is an octocopter equipped with cameras, a loudspeaker and blinding lights to scare unwanted visitors away. The team modified a DJI Spreading Wings S100 drones by adding the cameras and computers that navigate the drones around the property, avoid obstacles and search for things that should not be present in its range. Drones are programmed with the area to patrol and spots unwanted intruders with its onboard cameras.

"They tirelessly patrol outside your property around the clock, and actively deter crime by establishing physical presence at the site," the San Francisco startup Aptonomy said on its website. "[Smart] drones live on your property, and get to know it well. In a live monitoring scenario, you can adjust the drone's viewpoint and move it around safety in real-time – even from hundreds of miles away." Special features of the security drone are a flight controller, day and night vision cameras, strobe lighting and loudspeakers built on top of the DJI S-1000, a camera-carrying octocopter, the type most often used by movie-makers. The security drone's artificial intelligence hardware and navigational systems allow it to fly low and fast, avoiding obstacles in structure-dense environments to detect human activity or faces.