Andreas Raptopoulos and his colleagues at Matternet are attempting to create a network of drones that operate like the internet, only for tangible objects. This company -- which sprung out of an idea surfaced at Singularity University in 2011 -- aims to deliver items wherever they are needed, even if no usable roads go there. In his TED T...

  Here's a deep dive into a provocative topic: drones. For all the rhetoric, you might think think that this is a zero sum game: Drones will either destroy the world, or they'll save it. The truth, of course, is that, well, they're set to do both. Sophisticated developments see extraordinary advances on the part of the military, while...

Drones are the sexy, mysterious tech craze that are often a butt of a joke, a vague solution or an ominous threat. But no matter how flashy, good technology should still solve concrete problems. Amid the hype of getting packages and pizzas delivered in half the time, what if drones could revolutionize transportation networks, connecting peop...

Unmanned aerial vehicles -- that is, drones -- have a lot of people (and entire countries) hot under the collar. Every few days it seems a new report comes out about the death of another group of "faceless" people, whether it's suspected terrorist leaders or civilians. With little transparency from the governments launching drone strikes, th...

Marc Goodman of the Future Crimes Institute and Singularity University shares his thinking on the promise -- and threat -- of drones. For most people, drones are flying robots irrevocably associated with killing, warfare or even war crimes over the skies of Iraq or Afghanistan. Yet what started out as a purely military technology is rapidly m...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

What are our forests really made of? From the air, ecologist Greg Asner uses a spectrometer and high-powered lasers to map nature in meticulous kaleidoscopic 3D detail -- what he calls "a very high-tech accounting system" of carbon. In this fascinating talk, Asner gives a clear message: To save our ecosystems, we need more data, gathered in new ...

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 ...

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...

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...

"When I started working in this field, the word 'drone' wasn't used at all!" Sergei Lupashin says a little plaintively. "We called them UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles, and they were clearly flying robots. Nowadays it's all a bit more mixed up; you have to take extra steps to convince people that what you're doing is flying a cell phone and n...

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 ...

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....

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 ...

“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 P.W. Singer's most recent book, "Wired for War," he studies robotic and drone warfighters -- and explores how these new war machines are changing the very nature of human conflict. He has also written on other facets of modern war, including private armies and child soldiers.

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...

Editor's note: This poem kicks off a new "Question Worth Asking" series: "How weird will the future be?" First up: a piece from poet and TED Fellow Ben Burke. [Dear Helen- So sorry. Didn’t have time to write that poem. But my future self sent me one yesterday. So we’re good. Crazy, right? It’s totally legit and actually from the future, so no...

Earth has been around for over 4.5 billion years, and modern humans have inhabited it for the past 200,000. Yet in all that time, we’ve learned surprisingly little about the planet’s landscape and the animals that live on it. This is especially true of remote areas such as the Amazon’s dense jungles, the ocean’s vast coral reefs or the wide-...

About this event: Second TEDxKalamazoo to feature women leaders at November 8th event, taking place at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. The schedule speakers includes Sarah Lee, Penny Weller, Jen Eyer, Ethan Alexander, Matt Hampel, along with previously announced Dr. Chuck Severance, Dr. Jonathan Robinson, Danny Ellis. Adding to already announced provocative i...

About this event: Today its hard to imagine that people were once concerned that the speed of a steam engine might be too fast for humans. Self Driving cars, the Hyperloop, water and air taxis, drones and flying bikes all seem to become part of our reality sooner or later. It’s time to talk about the impact of transportation on society once again. How will this n...