In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration has been cautious about allowing unpiloted vehicles to zip around. There are numerous safety concerns – they could crash into buildings, interfere with airspace or cause other problems. In February 2015, however, the FAA moved to allow limited use of drones. The draft rules would keep the aircraft within the operator's line of sight, limit flights to daytime, and also regulate matters such as how the operator is certified. Should the drones be approved for agricultural use, it has the potential to revolutionize the industry. In an article for The Conversation, drones were mentioned as part of a network of technologies to help out farmers, including GPS, autonomous machines and creating more robust varieties of plants. Certain companies are also considering sending out drones to do deliveries, which could reduce the cost of using drivers for door-to-door service. Amazon is advertising a future service called "Prime Air," which is intended to send deliveries to customers in 30 minutes or less. They have written a letter of application to the FAA for this service. Drones are sometimes used by government agencies for safety reasons, such as monitoring storms and hurricanes without putting pilots at risk. One example is the Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3), a five-year test program using unmanned surveillance drones called Global Hawks. It's a collaboration among NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Northrop Grumman. Other reported uses of drones have been in applications such as search and rescue and in-air 3-D mapping.
