Faa took a major stride towards letting increasingly smart drones fly themselves. Skydio’s self-flying drones inspected any bridge in North Carolina for four years.

American robotics is the first company allowed to operate drones without needing a human pilot or an observer anywhere near the aircraft aircraft. The US airspace regulator is now taking an even bigger step.

Faa documents show that American robotics will still need to assign a human to each and every flight. They’re not fully automated yet.

The drone-in-a-box scout’s box includes an acoustic detection system. The base station can spot an incoming aircraft over two miles away and automatically force the drone to descend.

The FAA does n’t approve a waiver for certain locations in Kansas, Massachusetts and Nevada that are owned by the company or its customers.

The FAA does seem interested in what it can learn from letting American robotics fly without humans physically nearby. The FAA has a separate kind of certification.

American robotics will provide the FAA with critical data for use in evaluating BVLOS operations from offsite locations. Once adopted on a wider scale, such a scheme could lend efficiencies to many of the industries that fuel our economy.