drones

China has returned a U.S. Navy drone it confiscated last week in the South China Sea. Some see the incident as part of a larger Chinese effort to gradually erode U.S. strategic dominance in Asia.

A Chinese military spokesman says the drone was taken so it wouldn't pose a danger to ships; he also blames the U.S. for adding drama to the incident.

An art exhibit opening this week is providing a window to the atrocities of modern warfare from one hundred feet above.

"You can't protect what you can't map," says Patrick Meier. He pioneered the field of crisis mapping during the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and now focuses on the use of robotics for humanitarian purposes.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs, otherwise known as drones, are aircraft piloted by remote control or programmed to follow a flight path using GPS as a guide. They can be as small as a book or as large as a commercial airliner. From toys to weapons, they are filling a range of niches, including research and conservation efforts.

We spoke with Max Messinger, Founder of Linn Aerospace and Research Fellow with Wake Forest University Center for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability. He has spent the past several years developing, building, and flying a variety of drones to monitor the health of the Peruvian Amazon rainforests.