By Material Handling and Logistics

The White House, on August 3, unveiled accelerated rulemaking for commercial unmanned aircraft operations.  And Google will be joining the tests for drone delivers.

Google will participate in safety research through Project Wing, which is part of the “moonshot” unit, X, created last year when Google was reorganized under Alphabet.

Project Wing will work at one of the six research centers set up by the Federal Aviation Administration for drone tests and its data “will be shared with government partners to help regulators answer critical safety and human factor questions for (drone) cargo delivery operations,” a White House statement said.

A White House statement said the FAA “is working on the next regulatory steps for safely integrating (drones) in the airspace” for “beneficial uses of drones near crowds, such as aerial photography or videography for news gathering; for certain types of infrastructure inspection; and other applications.”

The government has registered more than 500,000 hobby drones in eight months, but sees a need for more rules for commercial operators.

More on drone testing on IndustryWeek, a companion site within Penton’s Manufacturing and Supply Chain Group.