Small drones will be allowed to fly over people and at night in the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Monday, a significant step towards its use for widespread commercial deliveries.
The FAA said its long-awaited rules for drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, will address security issues requiring remote identification technology in most cases to allow its identification from the ground.
Previously, small drone operations on people were limited to operations on people who were directly participating in the operation, located under a covered structure or inside a stationary vehicle – unless operators had obtained an FAA exemption.
The rules will come into force 60 days after publication in the January federal registry. Drone manufacturers will have 18 months to start producing drones with Remote ID and operators will have another year to provide Remote ID.
There are other, more complicated rules that allow night and person operations for larger drones in some cases.
“The new rules open the way for greater integration of drones in our airspace, addressing safety and security issues,” said FAA administrator Steve Dickson. “They bring us closer to the day when we will see drone operations more routinely, like package delivery.”
Companies have been racing to create fleets of drones to speed up deliveries. The United States has more than 1.7 million drone registrations and 203,000 FAA certified remote pilots.
For night operations, the FAA said that drones should be equipped with anti-collision lights. The final rules allow operations on moving vehicles in some circumstances.
Remote ID is required for all drones weighing 0.55 lb (0.25 kg) or more, but is required for smaller drones in certain circumstances, such as flights on outdoor mounts.
The new rules eliminate requirements for drones to be connected to the Internet to transmit location data, but they do so by transmitting remote ID messages via radio frequency transmission. Without the change, the use of drones could have been prevented from using in areas without access to the Internet.
The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International has said that Remote ID will function as “a digital license plate for drones … that will allow more complex operations”, while night and people operations “are important steps in enabling the integration of drones in our national airspace. ”
A change, since the rules were first proposed in 2019, requires that small drones have no exposed rotating parts that lacerate human skin.
United Parcel Service said in October 2019 that it won the first full government approval to operate a drone airline.
Last year, Alphabet’s Wing, a sister unit of the Google search engine, was the first company to obtain U.S. air carrier certification for a single pilot drone operation.
In August, Amazon’s drone service received federal approval, allowing the retailer to begin testing commercial deliveries through its drone fleet.
Walmart said in September that it would run a pilot project to deliver food and household products by automated drones, but acknowledged that “it will take some time before we see millions of packages delivered by drones.”