U.S. aviation regulators have approved the first fully automated commercial drone flight, giving a small company in Massachusetts permission to operate drones without practical management or direct observation by human controllers or observers.
The Federal Aviation Administration’s decision restricts the operation of automatic drones to rural areas and altitudes below 400 feet, but is a potentially important step in expanding commercial applications of drones for farmers, utilities, mining companies and other customers.
It also represents a further step in the FAA’s broader effort to authorize widespread flights by shifting from case to case exemption for specific vehicles performing specific tasks.
In approval documents posted on a government website on Thursday, the FAA said that once such automated drone operations are carried out on a wider scale, it’s efficiency for many of the industries that our economy such as agriculture, mining, transportation ‘and certain things can fuel, can mean manufacturing segments.
The FAA had earlier allowed drones to inspect railways, pipelines and some industrial sites out of sight of pilots or spotters on the ground, as long as such persons were relatively close by.