Amazon s journey to the Drone Ball has been a tortuous affair, with high hopes, false starts and crossed wires with its presumed date for the evening – the Federal Aviation Administration.
Now comes word, again, that the FAA may finally be ready to dance.
A report in Bloomberg says the Seattle-based online retailer has finally received an approval from regulators to test-fly its new airborne delivery system.
The Federal Aviation Administration gave the online retailer a waiver allowing flights as fast as 100 miles (161 kilometers) an hour and as high as 400 feet off the ground, according to a letter dated Wednesday posted on its website.
The plan, first unveiled in a 60 Minutes interview with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, is to develop autonomous drones that can dodge obstacles and find specific addresses to speed the delivery of small packages.
The company has been frustrated with the pace of FAA approvals and has been forced to conduct some tests in other countries, Misener said. The FAA on Feb. 15 unveiled its first set of proposed rules for commercial drone flights. Those initial rules wouldn t permit such automated activity because they require operators to keep their drones within sight at all times.As my colleague Levi Sumagaysay wrote here two weeks ago, the process has been a long and arduous one for Amazon:
Credit: SiliconBeat
