The Obama administration is opening U.S. skies to more commercial drones with long-awaited regulations that the government hopes will spawn new businesses inspecting bridges, monitoring crops and taking aerial photography.
In the most comprehensive set of rules yet for the burgeoning unmanned aircraft industry, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday went far beyond its original restrictive proposal issued last year. Drone operators will be able to petition the agency to fly beyond the horizon, at night and over people if they can show such flights are safe.