U.S. aviation regulators have approved the first commercial flights with fully automated commercial drones, giving a small Massachusetts company permission to operate drones without manual piloting or direct observation by human controllers or observers.
The Federal Aviation Administration’s decision limits the operation of automatic drones to rural areas and altitudes below 400 feet, but is a potentially significant step in expanding commercial drone applications for farmers, utilities, mining companies and other customers.
It is also another step in the FAA’s broader effort to authorize large-scale flights, moving from case-by-case exemptions to 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 conducted on a larger scale, they could mean “efficiency for many of the industries that fuel our economy, such as be agriculture, mining, transport ”and manufacturing segments.
The FAA has previously allowed drones to inspect railroad lines, pipelines and some industrial sites beyond the sight of pilots or spotters on the ground, as long as such individuals were located relatively close by.