Tiny drones are ideal candidates for fully autonomous jobs that are too dangerous or time-consuming for humans. A commonly shared dream by engineers and fire & rescue services, would be to have swarms of such drones help in search-and-rescue scenarios [1], for instance to localize gas leaks without endangering human lives. Tiny drones are ideal for such tasks, since they are small enough to navigate in narrow spaces, safe, agile, and very inexpensive. However, their small footprint also makes the design of an autonomous swarm extremely challenging, both from a software and hardware perspective. From a software perspective, it is really challenging to come up with an algorithm capable of autonomous and collaborative navigation within such tight resource constraints.

Experts have got together to discuss the future of home automation and reveal their predictions for the future of home automation. According to futurologists, around 90 per cent of household chores will be automated thanks to robots, drones and AI by 2040. These will be carried out by drones, robots and virtual AI butlers that will help with laundry, dusting and even making the bed, they claim. Kings College Professor Mischa Dohler and futurologist Dr Ian Pearson created a report with consumer site comparethemarket.com to predict how homes will look in two decades time. Experts have got together to discuss the future of home automation and revealed their predictions for the future of home automation.

If you ask these tiny drones, "Do you even lift, bro?" you will get a resounding yes. Researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland and Stanford University have developed a line of small flying bots that can move objects that are 40 times their weight. The drones, called FlyCroTugs (short for "flying, micro tugging robots"), are equipped with a system of winches, adhesives and microspines that allow the tiny crafts, which weigh just a few ounces each, to latch onto just about anything. The winch is one of the few immovable parts of the highly customizable drone -- just about everything else about it can be modified for a given scenario. The grippers can be moved around depending on the landing surface, and the drone can take on additional accessories like wheels when a job calls for it.

Drone-maker AeroVironment has developed a handheld quadcopter that it says can be carried by soldiers on the battlefield and quickly deployed to get an aerial look at a potentially hostile location. The drone, called Snipe Nano Quad, has retractable rotor arms so it can be carried in a compact form and unpacked when needed. It weighs just 140 grams (5 ounces). It's equipped with cameras that can send a visible or infrared image back to a handheld controller unit. The infrared view provides a way to see the body heat of a person who may be hidden. The drone has a top speed of around 20 miles per hour and a radio range of about 1 kilometer.

An artist's illustration shows how a remote-controlled drone might one day be used to pollinate flowers. Courtesy of Dr. Eijiro Miyako hide caption An artist's illustration shows how a remote-controlled drone might one day be used to pollinate flowers. Near Esparto, in the beautiful Capay Valley region of central California, 1,400 young almond trees flourish in a century-old orchard overlooking the hills. Since November, they've stood in perfect rows without a hint of foliage -- resting, naked and dormant, for the upcoming growing season. Their branches now swell with bright pastel blooms in preparation for pollination. Like most almond growers, Brian Paddock, owner of Capay Hills Orchard, relies on bees to provide this important aspect of crop development.

As a species, bumblebees aren't doing well, so sadly, we may have to consider a future with fewer of the endangered insects. Humanity would be in trouble without these active pollinators, so Japanese scientists have created drones that mimic them by spreading pollen from plant to plant. Researchers at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology bought $100 drones and affixed patches of horsehair to the bottoms. They then applied liquid ion gels, which MIT Technology Review says are as sticky and moist as Post-It notes, to the horsehair. In tests, the drones were able to fly into the plants, grabbing and releasing pollen from the male and female parts of pink and white Japanese lilies.

The wild west days of drone flight came to end earlier this year when the FAA began requiring that pilots register their aircraft with the agency. If you want to use your Unmanned Aircraft System (as the FAA calls them) for anything remotely commercial, you'll need to go a step further and pass a test. The registration is not particularly onerous, though there is a processing fee. The whole thing starts to feel a bit Kafkaesque when you get to the end and realize that you can "display" your registration number by writing it on the battery and then tucking that inside the aircraft. WAT? It's also unclear how often the regulations are going to be updated, or how the rules of flight are going to be enforced. For example, one rule states that a pilot has to maintain constant visual contact with his drone, but the signal range of some new models extends so far that it can fly up to two miles away from the operator.

Flapping two tiny wings, the small, thin robot wobbles its way towards the underside of a leaf, bumps into the surface and latches on, perching motionless above the ground. Moments later, its wings begin to flap once more and it jiggles off on its way. The little flying machine, dubbed a "RoboBee", has been designed to perch on a host of different surfaces, opening up new possibilities for the use of drones in providing a bird's-eye view of the world, scientists say. Know as micro aerial vehicles, such robots could be invaluable in reconnaissance of disaster zones or to form impromptu communication networks. But there is a hitch: flying takes energy, so the time these robots can spend in the air is limited by the size of the battery pack they can carry.

This little flying machine, dubbed a "RoboBee", has been designed to perch on a host of different surfaces, opening up new possibilities for the use of drones in providing a bird's-eye view of the world, scientists say.

The US military apparently never tires of thinking up capability gaps, and that means we may soon see fleets of small drones dropping out of bombers, then later being yanked out of the sky by cargo planes. Cartoonish as it may sound--as is the case with so many deadly-serious but still far-out military concepts--it makes a lot of sense. And Darpa, the Pentagon's weapon of choice for making crazy things happen, just chose four companies to push the idea forward. Called Gremlins (because you weren't already freaked out) the project calls for a new type of reusable unmanned aerial vehicle that can be air-launched on intelligence-gathering missions from cargo airplanes, bombers, or other military aircraft over "denied" (i.e., hostile) airspace. Once their missions are complete, up to three hours later, the drones will fly back to retrieval area where a C-130 cargo airplane will collect them.