1. This Autonomous Quadrotor Swarm Doesn’t Need GPS

By Evan Ackerman  Posted 27 Dec 2017 

• Researchers are working hard towards independent autonomy for flying robots,
• The University of Pennsylvania has been doing some particularly amazing development in this area, and they’ve managed to teach a swarm of of a dozen 250g quadrotors to fly in close formation, even though each one is using just one small camera and a simple IMU.
• This is probably the largest swarm of quadrotors which don’t rely on motion capture or GPS.
• All the autonomy components are working onboard

More info on IEEE Spectrum

2. Engineers program tiny robots to move, think like insects

By Syl Kacapyr  December 13, 2017

• While engineers have had success building tiny, insect-like robots, programming them to behave autonomously like real insects continues to present technical challenges.
• A group of Cornell engineers has been experimenting with a new type of programming that mimics the way an insect’s brain works, which could soon have people wondering if that fly on the wall is actually a fly.
• Unlike traditional chips that process combinations of 0s and 1s as binary code, neuromorphic chips process spikes of electrical current that fire in complex combinations, similar to how neurons fire inside a brain.
• Ferrari’s lab is developing a new class of “event-based” sensing and control algorithms that mimic neural activity and can be implemented on neuromorphic chips. 
• Ferrari’s lab has teamed up with the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory, which has developed an 80-milligram flying RoboBee outfitted with a number of vision, optical flow and motion sensors. 
• “You can’t really rely on prior modeling of the robot to do this, so we want to develop learning controllers that can adapt to any situation.” said Ferrari.

More info on Cornell.edu

3.The future of flying cars: science fact or science fiction?

    By Jonathan Roberts and Michael Milford  May 8, 2017

• Uber has shaken up the taxi industry and is trying to put driverless cars on our roads. Now the company aims to have flying ride-sharing vehiclesin our skies by 2020.
• Uber is not alone in working towards flying cars. But is this realistic, or just marketing hype?
• To many of us, the concept of flying cars is synonymous with the future, just like silver jumpsuitsand gourmet food in the form of a pill. Those dreams have not yet materialised so what about flying cars?
• How safe?
• How fast, how far?
• How easy?
• How much?
• How long the before I can fly to work?

More info on The Conversation