Or is it a remotely operated quadrotor conducting surveillance or preparing to drop a deadly payload? Human observers won't have to guess--or keep their eyes glued to computer monitors--now that there's superhuman artificial intelligence capable of distinguishing drones from those other flying objects. Automated watchfulness, thanks to machine learning, has given police and other agencies tasked with maintaining security an important countermeasure to help them keep pace with swarms of new drones taking to the skies. The security challenge has only grown over the past few years: Millions of people have bought consumer drones and sometimes flown them into off limits areas where they pose a hazard to crowds on the ground or larger aircraft in the sky. Off-the-shelf drones have also become affordable and dangerous weapons for the Islamic State and other militant groups in war-torn regions such as Iraq and Syria.

Recent events clearly suggest fast food fans will be very well catered for once full-fledged drone delivery services get off the ground. Oscar Mayer is the latest to join the party, this week unveiling the WienerDrone as part of its WienerFleet, which of course includes its famous WienerMobile. It can fly up to 1200 feet from the ground, too, which Oscar Mayer helpfully informs us is a distance equivalent to "2400 hot dogs end-to-end." The unique quadcopter looks a lot like the WienerMobile, only smaller and with propellers attached. If we're honest, the delivery method looks rather haphazard and could result in a messy rearrangement of any sauces slathered on your snack.

Drones with digital video capabilities already exist, but in the racing world, analog is still king. Fat Shark has been the go-to maker of racing drone goggles for several years, and it's about to double down on digital, which in turn could be the nudge toward dropping analog feeds that the sport needs. The $350 Base HD is the company's first all-digital headset, and it comes with a fancy new 720p LCoS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) display improved brightness, contrast ratios and clarity and a 28 degree field of view (this might sound small, but drone racing doesn't call for a huge FOV). Racing drones might be fast, but in terms of core technology, things move fairly slow. While DJI has introduced gesture control and computer vision into their consumer drones over the last few years, the average racing quadcopter has mostly just gotten smaller and quicker.

Being able to both walk and take flight is typical in nature, and now researchers are creating drones with similar capabilities. Scientists have developed a prototype drone that can both fly and drive - a breakthrough that could pave the way for flying cars in the future. The development could lead to machines that can fly into disaster zones and squeeze through tight spaces to transport objects or rescue people. The team developed various'path-planning' algorithms aimed at ensuring that the drones don't collide. To make them capable of driving, the team put two small motors with wheels on the bottom of each drone.

A research team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Monday shared a drone prototype, which would be able to both drive and fly. "The ability to both fly and drive is useful in environments with a lot of barriers, since you can fly over ground obstacles and drive under overhead obstacles. A drone with wheels is much more mobile while having only a slight reduction in flying time," said PhD student Brandon Araki, lead author on the paper. The hybrid model could solve the ultimate quagmire for drones -- they cannot travel large distances at a go, since flying, even though it is fast and very mobile, is generally limited by battery life. Driving based solutions, on the other hand are limited by obstacles and the low speed of land-based routes.

Some drones fly, others drive. Those that can do both, however, can reach places other machines can't, making them ideal for search and rescue -- or package delivery. That's why a team from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a fleet of autonomous drones that have rotors and wheels, giving them the capability avoid obstacles on the ground and to go underneath overhead obstructions. Just imagine a machine that can fly to a disaster zone and then drive in the gaps of collapsed buildings to search for survivors. The team based these new drones on a previous "flying monkey" robot one of them developed.

Google is partnering up with Lenovo and upstart camera maker Yi Technology to make cameras for its VR180 platform. There's currently not much info about the devices, but a line drawing on the site suggests one model will look like a compact camera with dual lenses. Google is now taking an active role in removing "confidential, personal medical records of private people" that may show up in public search results. The information now joins financial data and "revenge porn" in the categories that get scrubbed.

If Amazon has its way, cities around the US will have vertical drone centers shaped like giant beehives in the middle of downtown districts, allowing the online retailer to coordinate speedy deliveries by unmanned aircrafts. The company has filed for a patent for "multi-level fulfillment centers" that would accommodate the landing and takeoff of drones in dense urban settings, the latest example of Amazon's futuristic vision of reshaping the way people receive packages. The application filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office, which was written in 2015 and published last week, included a number of drawings of drones flying in and out of tall cylinder-shaped buildings that Amazon wants to locate in central metropolitan areas. The centers would allow Amazon to shift away from the traditional model of large single-story warehouses that temporarily store packages before they are shipped to customers. Those buildings are typically located on the outskirts of urban areas and are not convenient for deliveries into cities where populations continue to swell, the company noted.

The future of the United States Air Force is a human-piloted, $100 million stealth jet guiding flocks of $3 million drones that glide effortlessly into position powered by turbo fans. Thanks to the Air Force Research Lab and drone-maker Kratos, that future of combined human/robot formation is already being tested. There are many good reasons to want a human in the cockpit of a plane, including their judgement, fast-thinking skills, and the capability to respond to unexpected threats. But there are hard physical obstacles that suggest maybe not every plane needs to have a pilot. Humans need systems to stay alive, and those systems sometimes break.

This week, U.S. drone companies met with President Trump to discuss industry regulations. NPR's Melissa Block talks with April Glaser of Recode about how these companies actually want more regulation.