A wing-flapping drone inspired by the world's fastest bird has been developed that could one day find use in everything from surveillance operations to flower pollination. An international team of researchers designed the 26-gram ornithopter drone to hover, dart, glide, and dive just like a swift, making it far more versatile than a traditional quadcopter drone. "Unlike common quadcopters that are quite intrusive and not very agile, biologically-inspired drones could be used very successfully in a range of environments," said Dr Yao-Wei Chin, a research scientist from the National University of Singapore who led the project. "The light weight and the slow beating wings of the ornithopter poses less danger to the public that quadcopter drones in the event of a crash and given sufficient thrust and power banks it could be modified to carry different payloads depending on what is required." The researchers expect the first commercial use of the drone could be in monitoring large crowds or inspecting crops in fields.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said the electric car maker will have fully self-driving vehicles on the road by the end of the year. During an earnings call with investors on Wednesday, the serial entrepreneur revealed that he is already testing an updated version of the firm's Autopilot software on his commute to work in Los Angeles. "It's almost getting to a point where I can go from my house to work with no interventions, despite going through construction and widely varying situations," he said. "So this is why I'm very confident about full self-driving functionality being complete by the end of this year. If successfully rolled out in 2020, Tesla will become the first major automotive manufacturer to have commercially available cars on the road that are fully autonomous. Tesla is already among the leading car companies when it comes to self-driving technology, with its Autopilot software relying on eight external cameras, a radar and 12 ultrasonic sensors. All new models come with this hardware, while new versions of the software can be updated remotely. The car will seem to have just like a giant improvement," he said.

Researchers at MIT have developed a way to manufacturer "artificial atoms" to produce what they claim is the world's largest quantum chip of its kind. The atoms have been created in microscopically thin slices of diamond. The accomplishment "marks a turning point" in the field of quantum processors, said Dirk Englund, associate professor at MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, in a statement. These can be in binary positions – either on, or off. Apps, websites, and computer programmes are made up of information coded in this way.

The Atlanta Botanical Garden will be using a robotic sloth to save some of the world's most endangered species. The sloth robot, called Slothbot, hangs in trees to monitor animals, plants, and the environment. It was built by the robotics engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and uses solar panels to power itself. In larger environments, Salothbot will be able to switch between cables to cover more ground. "SlothBot embraces slowness as a design principle," the Georgia Tech "That's not how robots are typically designed today, but being slow and hyper-energy efficient will allow SlothBot to linger in the environment to observe things we can only see by being present continuously for months, or even years."

Researchers in Australia have achieved a world record internet speed of 44.2 terabits per second, allowing users to download 1,000 HD movies in a single second. A team from Monash, Swinburne and RMIT universities used a'micro-comb' optical chip containing hundreds of infrared lasers to transfer data across existing communications infrastructure in Melbourne. The highest commercial internet speed anywhere in the world is currently in Singapore, where the average download speed is 197.3 megabits per second (mbps). In Australia, the average download speed is 43.4 mbps – one million-times slower than the speeds achieved in the latest test. "There's a bit of a global race on at the moment to get this technology to a commercial stage, as the'micro-comb' at its heart is useful in a really broad range of existing technologies," Dr Bill Corcoran from Monash University, told The Independent.

You're going to hear a lot of claims about "5G firsts" as the leading telecom companies slug it out to deliver the next generation of wireless. And one just came from AT&T. The company says it has successfully completed the "world's first millimeter wave" 5G connection over a live network to what will be commercially available "standards-based" commercial mobile 5G device. Did your eyes just cross? Let's break this down a bit first.

Fortnite may be a free video game, but it's already earned $1 billion this year, as well as a cult following. A crowd gathers to buy copies of "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" during a launch event for the highly anticipated video game at a GameStop Corp. store November 7, 2011 in North Las Vegas, Nevada. The worldwide video game market could grow from $137.9 billion this year to $180.1 billion by 2021, according to Newzoo. The research firm also expects the top five video game markets to generate nearly $98 billion in revenue this year. China famously banned video game consoles for 15 years (2000 to 2015) due to fears about their impact on children's development, but that merely turned PCs – and later, mobile devices – into its main gaming platforms. China is now home to Tencent (NASDAQOTH: TCEHY), the largest video game publisher in the world.

AI research group DeepMind created the new tech that is able to spot key signs of eye disease just as well as the world's top doctors. A link has been sent to your friend's email address. A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. AI research group DeepMind created the new tech that is able to spot key signs of eye disease just as well as the world's top doctors.

CES 2018 has kicked off. And with it comes all sort of tat -- except, because it's the future, now that tat is connected to the internet. The Las Vegas spectacular is a gadget show, above all else, and there are thousands being released this week. But gadgets are ultimately a distraction. Toys might be fun, but they aren't where the future of technology can be seen.

Nasa researchers have found the first ever solar system that's filled with eight planets like ours, 2,500 lightyears away. But it might be the way it was discovered that's really astounding. It wasn't found by an astronomer, but by an artificially intelligent computer program built by Google. The research has led to hopes that AI can be used across astronomy to identify new planets and other discoveries with vastly increased speed. It's likely to find many more exoplanets from now on, say scientists, filling up solar systems and the universe with previously hidden worlds.