"What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" asks Regina Dugan, then director of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In this breathtaking talk she describes some of the extraordinary projects -- a robotic hummingbird, a prosthetic arm controlled by thought, and, well, the internet -- that her agency has create...

In 1998, aircraft designer Paul MacCready gave a live demo of his two-ounce unmanned surveillance drone on the TED stage in Monterey. "You see what it sees. Imagine you're a fly," he told the assembled audience, who watched the drone's footage projected onto the screen in front of them. (The moment is captured in the GIF below.) To the crowd...

David Lang is the cofounder and CEO of OpenROV, designing and manufacturing underwater drones.

Lots of happenings in the TED community this week. Below, some highlights. Autism awareness at the UN. April 1 is World Autism Awareness Day, and to formally commemorate it, Steve Silberman will give the keynote address at the United Nations Headquarters. Looking ahead to 2030, the UN Department of Public Information and Department of Eco...

At TEDGlobal 2013 environmental systems researcher Lian Pin Koh presents a new and unexpectedly benign use for drones: nature conservation. Nepal has natural landscapes that are beautiful -- and in danger. But wildlife conservation is costly, and time- and labor-consuming. Behold: Conservation drones, a new tool being used in Nepal to com...

When you hear the word "drone," you probably think of something either very useful or very scary. But could they have aesthetic value? Autonomous systems expert Raffaello D'Andrea develops flying machines, and his latest projects are pushing the boundaries of autonomous flight -- from a flying wing that can hover and recover from disturbance to ...

Sebastien de Halleux is a technology entrepreneur with a lifelong passion for building impactful businesses.

In 1998, aircraft designer Paul MacCready looks at a planet on which humans have utterly dominated nature, and talks about what we all can do to preserve nature's balance. His contribution: solar planes, superefficient gliders and the electric car.

Don't believe predictions that say the future is trending towards city living. Urbanization is actually reaching the end of its cycle, says logistics expert Julio Gil, and soon more people will be choosing to live (and work) in the countryside, thanks to rapid advances in augmented reality, autonomous delivery, off-the-grid energy and other tech...

TED Fellow Anab Jain imagines and builds future worlds we can experience in the present moment. By creating new ways of seeing, being and acting, she inspires and challenges us to look critically at the decisions and choices we make today.

America was built by makers -- curious, enthusiastic amateur inventors whose tinkering habit sparked whole new industries. At TED@MotorCity, MAKE magazine publisher Dale Dougherty says we're all makers at heart, and shows cool new tools to tinker with, like Arduinos, affordable 3D printers, even DIY satellites.

Paul MacCready -- aircraft designer, environmentalist, and lifelong lover of flight -- talks about his long career.

In this powerful talk, P.W. Singer shows how the widespread use of robots in war is changing the realities of combat. He shows us scenarios straight out of science fiction -- that now may not be so fictitious.

In 2009, political scientist P.W. Singer gave a TED Talk in which he predicted that the growing use of robots in war would change the realities of combat. Four years, and thousands of US drone strikes later, he talks to journalist Matthew Power; an edited version of their conversation follows. Matthew Power: In a recent article you discussed ...

Flight is about to get a lot more personal, says aviation entrepreneur Rodin Lyasoff. In this visionary talk, he imagines a new golden age of air travel in which small, autonomous air taxis allow us to bypass traffic jams and fundamentally transform how we get around our cities and towns. "In the past century, flight connected our planet," Lyaso...

About this event: TEDxVilniusSalon events, unlike standard TEDx events, are smaller (up to 100 people), focused on one single topic (different each time) and very interactive. The third TEDxVilniusSalon focused on the topic of smart and flying unmanned aircraft systems - drones and their potential to change the world by its widely usage from film making, packa...

This wow of a video premiered today in Berlin at the first TEDSalon in Germany. Filmmaker Christopher Kippenberger, a pioneer in using drones, asked artists and independent filmmakers to pick a Berlin landmark and use camera-equipped drones to capture it on video. Some of them flew the aircraft daringly over places that have never been filmed be...

It's a foggy day in Vancouver -- dense, white clouds hang over the North Shore Mountains, just barely visible through the high glass walls of Vancouver Convention Center. A light rain falls. But in Oahu, Hawaii, it's sunny, bright and clear. The connection? At TED2019, the Trident underwater drone patrols the water in Oahu, and attendees are...

When it comes to drones, a lot of ideas float in the ether. Technologists see potential for flying machines to help us in all sorts of unexpected ways, governments take measures that seem hard and fixed, and meanwhile the media oversimplifies and dramatizes the issue. The conversation on drones is ever changing -- especially with President O...

Technology thriller author, most recently of the book Kill Decision, Daniel Suarez has been thinking about drones for some time. But as he says, as he stands onstage at TEDGlobal 2013, he's not here to talk fiction. "I'm here to talk about very real autonomous combat drones," he says, adding that he doesn't mean remotely piloted drones such ...

About this event: This year’s theme is all about innovation. We will have great speakers from the US, Germany, the Emirates and some other great places that will share their ideas on Technology, Bitcoins, Drones, Aerospace, Design and the Digital World. Did somebody say burgers & music ?

If you're here from MetaFilter, hi! We're planning to post this talk in November. --eds Andreas Raptopoulos wants to serve the 1 billion people on Earth with no access to all-season roads -- the one-seventh of the world's population that is too often cut off from critical medicines, supplies and goods. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, 85% of ...

At his lab at the University of Pennsylvania, Vijay Kumar and his team have created autonomous aerial robots inspired by honeybees. Their latest breakthrough: Precision Farming, in which swarms of robots map, reconstruct and analyze every plant and piece of fruit in an orchard, providing vital information to farmers that can help improve yields ...

A flying device combined with some nifty software is serving up invaluable information about the health of whales -- and our oceans. Back in 2011, researcher Iain Kerr was having a frustrating day chasing sperm whales on the Gulf of Mexico. Kerr, CEO of the nonprofit Ocean Alliance and chief scientist of Parley SnotBot, would wait to spot a...

Um. Let's not shoot gay people “Hello! I’m one of those whatevers you’ve read about.” So starts an epic letter from Jon Drytay, written in response to a British council candidate’s musing aloud about the virtues of -- not kidding -- shooting gay people. New sexism. Same as the old sexism “We need to understand how the ‘new sexism’ combines ...

Forget aerial drones. Underwater drones are where the action's at, at least according to OpenROV founder and TED Fellow David Lang. Imagine climbing into the cockpit of your own personal submarine, zooming and diving through the depths of the ocean and exploring otherwise-unreachable underwater worlds -- all without needing to know how to swim....

“Our modern society has a special relationship to GPS. We’re almost blindly reliant on it,” Todd Humphreys says in his TEDxTalk. “It’s built deeply into our systems and infrastructure. Some call it the invisible utility.” As GPS becomes more and more pervasive, technology is being developed to counter it -- sometimes to restore privacy, b...

In art, drones can be magical. It's a simple story: a man working too late at night starts to see things. He's not sure if they're real or a sleep-induced fantasy. But since it's 2014, of course that dream is actually drones. Following an electrical outage, a nameless lamp repairman finds himself completely in the dark. As he lights a ...

We are excited to introduce you to three new speakers who’ve been added to the program for TEDGlobal 2013, themed “Think Again.” First, jazz-pop singer Jamie Cullum will take the stage to perform during session 10, “Imagined Beauty.” Just last week, Cullum released this nerdily adorable video -- shot in one continuous Steadicam take -- for...