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(Adds details of winners)
By David Shepardson and Jeffrey Dastin
WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO, May 9 (Reuters) - Apple Inc soon will be capturing images of North Carolina by drone; a 1,500-pound, unmanned aircraft will look for mosquitoes in Florida; and startup Flirtey will fly medical equipment on drones to heart-attack victims in Nevada.
The projects are among 10 announced by the U.S. Transportation Department on Wednesday that will help it assess how to regulate drones and integrate them safely into U.S. air space. The United States has lagged other countries in experimentation with drones, something the program hopes to correct.
Missing from the projects are Amazon.com Inc, the world's largest online retailer, and China's DJI, the world's largest maker of non-military drones. About a dozen applications that included DJI were rejected. An application that would have seen Amazon deliver goods by drone to shoppers in New York City was also declined, a person familiar with the matter said.
Among the winners were microchip maker Intel Corp, plane maker Airbus SE, ride services company Uber Technologies Inc, delivery company FedEx Corp and software maker Microsoft Corp.
The contest drew 149 bids from locales looking to host flights at night, flights over people and other drone operations that U.S. rules prohibit. The applicants listed companies they would partner with in the experiments, and the winners may have a head start at the billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs the young industry expects to create.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said dozens more projects could be approved in coming months, either with new waivers or under existing rules. Asked about Amazon's absence, Deputy Transportation Secretary Jeff Rosen cited a rigorous process and said there were "no losers."
The wide interest in the U.S. initiative, launched by President Donald Trump last year, underscores the desire of a broad range of companies to have a say in how the fledgling industry is regulated and ultimately win authority to operate drones for purposes ranging from package delivery to crop inspection.
FLYING BURGERS
One clear winner was Nevada-based Flirtey, a drone delivery startup. It said it was a partner on four of the winning applications and expects the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration programs to jump-start growth.
"This gives it the ability to move into any geography in the United States and move out of test mode into full operation," said Mark Siegel, a partner at Menlo Ventures, an investor in Flirtey.
The startup will have to hire more people, ramp up its testing and add more features to its drones -- all of which will require more money, and Flirtey will complete another financing round this year, Siegel said.