Police are investigating witness reports of a drone being flown Monday evening near the Imperial Palace and other downtown Tokyo areas, after a number of similar sightings were noted last week following the ascension of Emperor Naruhito. The flying of drones is banned in central Tokyo. Riot police observed what they thought was a drone flying over the Kitanomaru Garden located just north of the palace at around 7:30 p.m. Monday, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. Further reports were made later saying a drone had been spotted flying over Tokyo's Nagatacho district, where the country's Diet and the Prime Minister's Office are located, as well as in the Yotsuya and Roppongi areas of the city, according to the police. The police searched the areas but failed to track down the pilot.

A sister company of Google, Alphabet's Wing Aviation, just got federal approval to start using drones for commercial delivery. Amazon's own drone-delivery program is ready to launch as well. As drones take flight, the world is about to get a lot louder – as if neighborhoods were filled with leaf blowers, lawn mowers and chainsaws. Small recreational drones are fairly loud. Serious commercial drones are much louder.

Drone technology is increasingly proving itself across a variety of industries, including the medical field where the machine's ability to be quickly deployed and move at speed across urban areas for vital deliveries can be a literal lifesaver. In what's believed to be a world first, researchers at the University of Maryland this week announced the successful transportation of a kidney for a woman needing a transplant. "This whole thing is amazing," the unnamed patient said. "Years ago, this was not something that you would think about." Following the successful operation, the 44-year-old Baltimore resident was discharged from hospital on Tuesday.

If you live in southwest Virginia, don't be surprised at the sight of a drone winging its way on another airborne delivery run over your neighborhood soon. Wing, the drone delivery service spun off from Alphabet's Google, hopes to start flights to homes and businesses in the Blacksburg and Christiansburg areas by the end of the year now that it has the blessings of the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA announced earlier this week that it had approved Wing as the first air carrier certified for drone delivery. In receiving the certification, Wing beat Amazon to the punch despite all the attention that the online merchandise giant has drawn over its interest in deliveries by air. Both companies, along with others, have been racing to develop drones as a more cost-effective way of delivering small, high-value orders, like medicine.

As the world races to deploy speedy 5G mobile networks on the ground, some companies remain focused on floating cell towers in the sky. During the final session of the sixth annual Brooklyn 5G Summit on Thursday, Silicon Valley and telecom leaders discussed whether aerial drones and balloons could finally begin providing commercial mobile phone and Internet service from the air. That same day, Alphabet subsidiary Loon, a balloon-focused graduate of the Google X research lab, unveiled a strategic partnership with Softbank's HAPSMobile to leverage both solar-powered balloons and drones to expand mobile Internet coverage and aid in deploying 5G networks. No high-altitude network connectivity services have taken off commercially so far, but some Brooklyn 5G Summit speakers were optimistic that it would happen soon. "The opportunity is in our hands in terms of truly leveraging 5G in conjunction with the massive paradigm shift when it comes to UAS--drones--and also satellites," said Volker Ziegler, CTO at Nokia Bell Labs.

Today, Zipline is officially opening the first of four distribution centers in Ghana, inaugurating a drone-delivery network that will eventually serve 2,000 hospitals and clinics covering 12 million people. Here's what Zipline says in a press release about the new operation: The revolutionary new service will use drones to make on-demand, emergency deliveries of 148 different vaccines, blood products, and life-saving medications. The service will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from 4 distribution centers--each equipped with 30 drones--and deliver to 2,000 health facilities serving 12 million people across the country. Together, all four distribution centers will make up to 600 on-demand delivery flights a day on behalf of the Government of Ghana. Each Zipline distribution center has the capacity to make up to 500 flights per day. Zipline's contract with the government of Ghana is worth US $12.5 million, but there has been significant criticism over the deal from the minority party in the Ghanaian government (backed by the Ghana Medical Association) arguing that funding was urgently needed for basic services rather than for medical drone delivery.

Wing achieved a significant milestone today, becoming the first drone delivery company to receive Air Carrier Certification from the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This is an important step for the FAA and the drone industry in the United States; the result of years of work to safely integrate drones into the national airspace. We're grateful for the vision of the Administration, the Department of Transportation, and the FAA for creating the Unmanned Aircraft System Integration Pilot Program (UAS IPP) to advance the drone industry in the US. "This is an important step forward for the safe testing and integration of drones into our economy. Safety continues to be our Number One priority as this technology continues to develop and realize its full potential," said U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Elaine L. Chao.

A Google offshoot will pave the way for commercial drone deliveries in the U.S. after getting the green light from the FAA. The precedent, which was foreshadowed by the FAA's Unmanned Aircraft System Integration Executive Director, Jay Merkle, last month, is a major step for commercial drones in the U.S. where regulators have been slow to allow widespread usage. Approval of the drones, which will be operated by a company called Wing, effectively classifies the company as a small aircraft operator -- a determination that carries a stringent set of mandatory guidelines. Wing has scored another major victory with its recent approval from the FAA in the U.S. Wing, the first commercial drone company approved by the FAA in the U.S. will start delivering in Virginia. The drones is powered entirely by electric and can fly up to 120 km/h (almost 75 mph).

Who's flying that drone over my house, and what exactly are they looking for? Is the pilot a police officer, a search-and-rescue volunteer, or Creepy Steve from four doors down? These concerns over the origin and intention of small drones have bedeviled the drone industry for as long as it has existed. Our inability to figure out who is piloting the weird quadcopter over our neighborhoods surely has a lot to do with why so many still distrust drones. People are working on it, though.

Today, Alphabet's Wing division became the first drone delivery company to receive its Air Carrier Certification from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The certification means Wing can begin a commercial drone delivery service, and the company hopes to launch its first delivery trial later this year. Over the next several months, Wing will work with the FAA's Unmanned Aircraft System Integration Pilot Program (UAS IPP) in Southwest Virginia. It will soon begin reaching out to residents and businesses in the Blacksburg and Christiansburg, Virginia, areas to demonstrate its technology and to gather feedback. This has been years in the making.