Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Richard Newstead)

The New York City Police Department said it will use drones to check out backyard parties when neighbors call to complain about large crowds this weekend.

"The drones are going to be responding to non-priority calls and priority calls," NYPD Assistant Commissioner Kaz Daughtry said at a press conference yesterday. "For example, if we have any 311 calls on our non-emergency line where if a caller states there's a large crowd, a large party in the backyard, we're going to be utilizing our assets to go up, to go check on the party, to make sure if the call is founded or not, and we'll be able to determine how many resources we need to send to that location for this weekend. So we will have our drone teams out there starting tonight, all the way into Monday morning."

Daughtry spoke near the end of a press conference ( see video ) about safety and security measures for J'Ouvert , a "traditional street festival honoring the vast heritage and culture of the Caribbean diaspora," and the West Indian Day Parade.

Enlarge / A long-exposure image of an AI-trained autonomous UZH drone (the blue streak) that completed a lap a half-second ahead of the best time of a human pilot (the red streak). (credit: UZH / Leonard Bauersfeld )

On Wednesday, a team of researchers from the University of Zürich and Intel announced that they have developed an autonomous drone system named Swift that can beat human champions in first-person view (FPV) drone racing . While AI has previously bested humans in games like chess, Go , and even StarCraft , this may be the first time an AI system has outperformed human pilots in a physical sport.

FPV drone racing is a sport where competitors attempt to pilot high-speed drones through an obstacle course as fast as possible. Pilots control the drones remotely while wearing a headset that provides a video feed from an onboard camera, giving them a first-person view from the drone's perspective.

The researchers at the University of Zürich (UZH) have been trying to craft an ideal AI-powered drone pilot for years , but they previously needed help from a special motion-capture system to take the win. Recently, they came up with an autonomous breakthrough based largely on machine vision, putting the AI system on a more even footing with a human pilot.

Enlarge / A Voyager-class saildrone. (credit: Saildrone)

Science fiction often paints a terrifying picture of the future—think aliens decimating humanity, à la The War of the Worlds . But sometimes the future becoming the present can be pretty amazing—who doesn’t love successful space launches majestically catapulting humans skyward?

Or take Earth’s oceans, which are currently in the middle of a technological revolution that, outside of some very nerdy circles, has gone largely unnoticed.

“We’re at the cusp of a proliferation of lots of autonomous vehicles in the ocean,” said Alex De Robertis , a biologist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “Things that were science fiction not so long ago are kind of routine now.” That includes saildrones, which look like oversized orange surfboards, each with a hard, carbon-fiber sail (called a wing) and a stash of scientific equipment.

Enlarge / An armed unmanned aerial vehicle on runway, but orange. (credit: Getty Images)

Over the past 24 hours, several news outlets reported a now-retracted story claiming that the US Air Force had run a simulation in which an AI-controlled drone " went rogue " and "killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective." The US Air Force has denied that any simulation ever took place, and the original source of the story says he "misspoke."

The story originated in a recap published on the website of the Royal Aeronautical Society that served as an overview of sessions at the Future Combat Air & Space Capabilities Summit that took place last week in London.

In a section of that piece titled "AI—is Skynet here already?" the authors of the piece recount a presentation by USAF Chief of AI Test and Operations Col. Tucker "Cinco" Hamilton, who spoke about a "simulated test" where an AI-enabled drone, tasked with identifying and destroying surface-to-air missile sites, started to perceive human "no-go" decisions as obstacles to achieving its primary mission. In the "simulation," the AI reportedly attacked its human operator, and when trained not to harm the operator, it instead destroyed the communication tower, preventing the operator from interfering with its mission.

Redon Agglomération fait partie des 500 premières collectivités labellisée s Terre de Jeux 2024 par le  comité d’organisation des Jeux Olympiques et Paralympiques de 2024.

Objectif : faire du territoire une base arrière des Jeux et accueillir des délégations françaises et étrangères qui souhaiteraient venir s’entraîner durant l’Olympiade 2024.

Si le rayonnement des Jeux Olympiques de Londres a profité à Dinard comme base arrière sur la côte  d’Émeraude en 2012, le pays de Redon peut pleinement s’inspirer de recommandations qui figurent  dans un rapport intitulé : « Paris 2024 : just deliver the Games ».

On ne dira jamais assez l’effet majeur et transformateur d’un tel événement sur l’image qu’un pays  projette vers le monde, mais aussi sur l’image qu’un territoire industriel peut construire de lui-même.

Marcel Quercia, inventeur du briquet à gaz et de la saga Flaminaire à Redon, a aussi fondé l’aérodrome  de la ville. Il en était le premier président. D’origine italienne, son père, Janvier Quercia était le  descendant de Jacomo de la Quercia, professeur de Michel-Ange.

Les JO 2024 comme occasion de faire rayonner le pays

Mobilité, tourisme et attractivité seront les clés du succès des Jeux Olympiques en 2024 qui feront la  fierté de notre pays.

Il y a quelques mois avait ainsi lieu à Pontoise (Île-de-France) l’ inauguration du premier Vertiport intégré, épicentre de nouvelles mobilités aériennes durables. Les démarches administratives sont en cours pour implanter cinq vertiports à horizon 2024 en Île-de-France. Dans le domaine médical, les  groupes Aéroports de Paris et RATP travaillent avec l’Assistance publique – Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP) pour évaluer l’usage d’aéronefs légers au service de trois besoins de transports : le transport de  matériel biologique, de blessés légers ou de médecins spécialisés.

Ces mobilités d’avenir sont-elles expérimentables dans le pays de Redon ?

Grâce à son aérodrome, pôle historique autour des nouvelles mobilités aériennes, il est possible de regrouper une trentaine d’acteurs industriels, académiques ou réglementaires pour répondre à l’ensemble des enjeux à venir : aéronefs, opérations, infrastructures, gestion de l’espace aérien, acceptabilité.

Voici quelques nouvelles que nous pouvons utiliser. Maintenant, architectes, ingénieurs et étudiants  en mobilité de demain : commencez à expérimenter.