WASHINGTON - The Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday that 43 flights into New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport were required to hold after drone sightings at a nearby airport on Tuesday, while nine flights were diverted. The incident comes as major U.S. airports are assessing the threat of drones and have been holding meetings to address the issue. The issue of drones impacting commercial air traffic came to the fore after London's second-busiest airport, Gatwick Airport, was severely disrupted in December when drones were sighted on three consecutive days. An FAA spokesman said that Tuesday's event lasted for 21 minutes. The flights into Newark, the 11th-busiest U.S. airport, were suspended after a drone was seen flying at 3,500 feet over nearby Teterboro Airport, a small regional airport about 17 miles (27.3 km) away that mostly handles corporate jets and private planes.

No matter who you ask, the near-future of delivery seems to involve fleets of robots shuffling packages from stores, down sidewalks, and onto doorsteps. Robots will lug grocery bags from market to kitchen; they'll begin to replace humans delivering take-out and dropping off parcels. And soon, your Amazon Prime packages may show up courtesy of Scout, Amazon's new six-wheeled autonomous delivery robot built to withstand the sidewalk. Amazon announced on Wednesday that it will begin field testing Scout in Snohomish County, Washington, with Prime customers who request same-day, one-day, or two-day delivery. For now, Amazon says it will limit its testing to daylight hours during the week, when sidewalk traffic is lowest.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the Newark airport, said in a statement that agency officials met last week with counterparts from the FAA, FBI and Homeland Security Department "to review and enhance protocols for the rapid detection and interdiction of drones." A spokesman would not provide specifics and declined to say whether the airport has any anti-drone technology.

A Project Task Assignment for the Teaming-Enabled Architectures for Manned-Unmanned Systems (TEAMS) prototype program was recently awarded to GE Aviation. The project is under the authority of the Base Vertical Lift Consortium Project Agreement and is sponsored by the U.S. Air Force Research Lab (AFRL). "The TEAMS program is a tremendous opportunity for GE to work closely with AFRL and our industry partners to prototype architectures that will enable the next generation of Manned-Unmanned Teaming capabilities," says John Kormash, director of Advanced & Special Programs for GE Aviation. "GE's experience and investments in the areas of architecture, modeling, simulation, and system instantiations will enhance the AFRL's objectives of developing open, flexible, and scalable solutions for tomorrow's autonomous vehicles." TEAMS is an architectural modeling and prototyping effort under the AFRL's Flexible, Assured Manned-Unmanned Systems (FAMUS) program.

Amazon is working on delivery robots, and it's already bringing the self-driving machines to the streets. Starting today, six Amazon Scout devices are delivering packages in a neighborhood in Snohomish County, Washington, north of Amazon's Seattle home base. While the robots can navigate by themselves, an Amazon employee will accompany them, at least for now. Scout is about the size of a small cooler and it trundles along at walking pace. Amazon claims the battery-powered robot can safely deal with obstacles such as pedestrians and pets.

Amazon.com Inc. will use robots to deliver packages in the suburbs north of Seattle, its latest experiment to automate the last-mile of delivery that's a labor-intensive and costly component of buying products online. The e-commerce giant on Wednesday announced a trial of "Amazon Scout," autonomous delivery devices the size of a cooler that roll along sidewalks at a walking pace. It will use six robots, which are designed to navigate around obstacles such as people and pets, to deliver packages in Snohomish County. The robots will be used to make deliveries Monday through Friday during daylight hours. Using robots to make deliveries outside on city streets will be much more challenging than most current common uses, such as moving items around in warehouses, hospitals and hotels that are well-lit and have level floors, said Dan Kara, vice president of robotics at WTWH Media.

Multiple companies have outlined plans for flying taxis, but Boeing just took an important step toward making them a practical reality. The aircraft maker has completed the first test flight of its autonomous electric VTOL aircraft, verifying that the machine can take off, hover and land. It's a modest start, to put it mildly -- the taxi has yet to fly forward, let alone transition from vertical to forward flight modes. That still puts it ahead of competitors, though, and it's no mean feat when the aircraft existed as little more than a concept roughly one year ago. When finished, the vehicle will serve as an "urban air mobility" solution that shuttles passengers across town in situations where ground transportation would be slow or impractical, with a peak range of 50 miles.

Flights at New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport were disrupted Tuesday evening after sightings of a drone flying nearby. "At approximately 5pm (22:00 GMT), we received two reports from incoming flights into Newark that a drone was sighted at about 3,500 feet (1,066 metres) above Teterboro, New Jersey," said a spokesman from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). A pilot told air traffic controllers that the drone came within nine metres of his aircraft. Flights in and out of Newark were briefly halted. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey operates both Newark airport and Teterboro which caters mainly to smaller private and corporate jets.

An Alaska company that makes a parachute system for drones came to Rome to conduct federal validation tests for its product. Indemnis sent a team to the New York Unmanned Aerial Systems Test Site at Griffiss International Airport in Rome in December to demonstrate its Nexus parachute system, according to a news release issued Wednesday by DJI, the Shenzhen, China-based maker of a line of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, and NUAIR. DJI has lines of drones for use in photography, film making, law enforcement, construction, agriculture and consumers. The companies began working together two years ago to develop a system that can deploy instantly if a drone gets into trouble. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration prohibits most drone operations over people, but operators can get a waiver if they show they have safety measures.

Just a month after reports of drone activity repeatedly closed Gatwick airport in the UK, Newark Liberty International Airport temporarily halted arrivals on Tuesday. In a tweet after it reopened, Newark said there were reports of drone activity "to the north" earlier. Reuters reports on an FAA statement saying that two drones were sighted at about 3,500 feet above Teterboro Airport, which along with Newark is operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. In the UK, EasyJet said that the Gatwick closings grounded 1,000 flights, caused 400 flight cancellations and cost it 15 million pounds in passenger compensation, calling the incident a "wake up call" for the industry. Gatwick and Heathrow purchased anti-drone systems after incidents, although police still have not identified anyone behind them after arresting and releasing two people.