Drone industry experts say that while new federal regulations would limit many commercial drone applications for now, uses such as Amazon’s planned package delivery and even pizza drop-offs will come eventually.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposed safety rules for small commercial drones that would require that operators have the drones within sight and ban flying them over bystanders or higher than 500 feet. Companies including Amazon and Google are expected to file comments about the rules after their publication in the Federal Register.

The proposed rules are “a stepping stone for coming up with policies for how delivery drones are going to operate,” said P.K. Kannan, a University of Maryland marketing professor who is researching how retail businesses can use drones. “I don’t think the U.S. government wants to stifle this business that is really going to take off.”

Other countries are ahead of the U.S. in the testing of drones for delivery and commercial uses. Earlier this month, Alibaba had a three-day trial of drones delivering tea from its Taobao online shopping site to customers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. And in Germany, DHL has used a drone called a “parcelcopter” to deliver medicine and other goods to an island in the North Sea.

These two uses would be prohibited under the FAA’s proposed rules since the Taobao test flew over the population and the DHL flights were beyond the line of sight of a controller.

As proposed, the FAA’s rules would not allow Amazon’s planned Prime Air drone delivery service “to operate in the United States,” said Paul Misener, Amazon vice president for global policy, in a statement. He added: “We are committed to realizing our vision for Prime Air and are prepared to deploy where we have the regulatory support we need.”

Amazon asked the FAA in August for an exemption that would allow it to expand testing beyond the retailer’s Seattle R&D lab. The FAA has not yet ruled on it.

Misener told the agency that Amazon, and the U.S., runs the risk of falling behind without increased testing. “Our continuing innovation through outdoor testing in the United States and, more generally, the competitiveness of the American small UAS (unmanned aerial system) industry, can no longer afford to wait,” he wrote the agency in December.

The FAA’s rule proposal represents an initial wave of regulations to begin the integration of drones into the airspace, and it will be followed by more rules for flights beyond operator’s line of sight, said Bill O’Connor, an attorney for the San Francisco-based firm Morrison & Forester.

Source: USA TODAY