What if a parent could feel safe allowing a drone to walk their child to the bus stop? That might occur sooner than you think with a new avenue of artificial intelligence, being studied by Purdue University researchers, that creates brain-inspired computing to allow systems such as drones, vehicles and robots to operate without human intervention. Drones are going to become more commonplace. The Federal Aviation Administration reports that 420,000 of them will be in the air by 2021. New research at Purdue's Center for Brain-inspired Computing Enabling Autonomous Intelligence, or C-BRIC, could direct drones and other robotic devices and machines to do even more through advanced artificial intelligence.