Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. It wasn't quite the eureka moment a team of scientists in Japan had set out for. Leo Uesaka, a marine biologist at the University of Tokyo, planned to study how seabirds use their legs to take flight from the ocean surface. He secured matchbox-sized cameras to the undersides of 15 streaked shearwaters (Calonectris leucomelas), a Pacific Ocean petrel species, to observe their movements. The tiny, tail-facing cameras successfully recorded information on the birds' legs.

Founder Adam Smith said his business failed to take off because current state-of-the-art machine learning models'don't understand the structure of code'. Kite, a start-up that has been developing artificial intelligence technology to help developers write code for nearly a decade, is sunsetting its business. Based in San Francisco, Kite was founded in 2014 as an early pioneer in the emerging field of AI that assists software developers in writing code – an'autocomplete' for programming of sorts. But now, after eight years of pursuing its vision to be a leader in AI-assisted programming, founder Adam Smith announced on the company website that the business is now wrapping up. "From 2014 to 2021, Kite was a start-up using AI to help developers write code. We have stopped working on Kite and are no longer supporting the Kite software," Smith wrote.

A new generation of ultralight drone has been designed using flapping wings, as opposed to rigid ones, or rotating propellers. Alireza Ramezan, a roboticist at Boston's Northeastern University, devised the UAV after studying nature and hopes it could one day be used to enhance modern life by pollinating crops, collecting weather data and monitoring traffic. They may even function as'guardians of future cities', monitoring elderly people who live alone, or by working with the emergency services. Mimic: The Bat Bot has highly stretchable silicone-based membrane wings that are controlled by number of joints, much like the creature it's inspired by'There will be these machines that are round the clock doing monitoring and providing information,' says Dr Ramezani. 'We can think of them as the guardians of future cities.' Dr Ramezani came up with the idea after studying how bats take flight.

Wing said https://www.wing.com/finland it has spent the last 18 months testing drone delivery in south-eastern Australia, partnering with local businesses to deliver a range of food and drinks, medicine and household items.

Drone racing is returning back and this year the flight path will be among the installations at Inner Harbor. The Baltimore Drone Prix is expanding in a number of ways. The pro-level racers on April 14 and 15, and youth and amateur entrants on April 21, will be participating in the competition. Eno Umoh, Co-Founder of Global Air Media, stated that he wants drone racing to feel like a recreational sport. "The plan is to have this team stick together," he added.

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. Awww, a SpotMini using its face-arm to help a buddy...adorable! Perhaps Boston Dynamics could release some behind-the-scenes footage (or outtakes!) to show what's going on here?

Matternet has long used Switzerland as a testing ground for its delivery drone technology, and now it's ramping things up a notch. The company has revealed plans to launch the first permanent autonomous drone delivery network in Switzerland, where its flying robot couriers will shuttle blood and pathology samples between hospital facilities. The trick is the Matternet Station you see above: when a drone lands, the Station locks it into place and swaps out both the battery and the cargo (loaded into boxes by humans, who scan QR codes for access). Stations even have their own mechanisms to manage drone traffic if the skies are busy. And the automation isn't just for the sake of cleverness -- it might be crucial to saving lives.

Accomplished pilots compete in racing leagues and championships backed by big-name sponsors and watched by fans on the internet and ESPN.

CalTech and university of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers have created a robot that mimics bat flight. Bat wings have intrigued scientists for centuries. And now, engineers have created "Bat Bot," a small aircraft that mimics the flight patterns of the small, rodent-like flyers. Bat Bot exposes the complicated mechanics of bat flight and simultaneously provides clues into how to make better aerial drones. Bat Bot is a remix on an ornithopter, a machine that uses flapping wings to take flight as opposed a propeller or a balloon.

This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE. The DARPA Robotics Challenge this past summer showcased how far humanoid robots have come--but also how far they have yet to go before they can tackle real-world practical applications. Even the best of the DRC behemoths stumbled and fell down, proving, as IEEE Spectrum noted at the time, that "not walking is a big advantage." There is, in fact, a new not-walking way for robots to perform many kinds of tasks better and faster: the dexterous drone.