News

Drone delivery scheduled for take off in just one year

Drones in retail delivery could be a reality within the next year as the Federal Aviation Administration is finalizing rules regarding unmanned drone operations by businesses.

June 18, 2015

Drones in retail delivery could be a reality within the next year as the Federal Aviation Administration is finalizing rules regarding unmanned drone operations by businesses, according to a Reutersreport.

A top federal administration official told Congress the expected date for regulation enaction is June 17, 2016.

"The rule will be in place within a year," Federal Aviation Administration Deputy Administrator Michael Whitaker testified in a hearing held by the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee, stated Reuters.

Drone delivery has already been in pilot mode and development by retail and commercial companies, notably powerhouse retailer Amazon.com. Advocates say such technology will save industries millions in delivery costs but privacy organizations are worried a drone could be used for nefarious reasons and invade citizen privacy.

According to Reuters, an Amazon.com leader also testified at the hearing and told the committee the global online retailer will be ready to deploy drone delivery as soon as the government gives the green light and that its initial drone delivery strategy will be to deliver items to customers within a half hour of an order.

The federal agency has been revamping drone regulations this year in light of privacy and concerns that such devices will prove noisy and disruptive. In response to commercial industry pressure to make drone technology easy to deploy the agency has also been working to create more efficient processing of drone use requests.