Mr. Huerta said the choice of the six institutions marked a milestone for the aircraft, whose proponents prefer to call them “unmanned aerial systems.” But he said that while a 2012 law sets 2015 as the year by which they should be integrated into an airspace shared with conventional airplanes, “we would envision that that would be a staged process, as we learn more about what these aircraft are, and how they interact with other aircraft.”

The phase-in could be by type of drone or by type of airspace, or some other factor. The research will continue until 2017, the F.A.A. said. Flights are expected to begin within six months.

The basic concept of integrated airspace is that everything in the sky — manned or not — will use the Global Positioning System to determine its location, and will radio that information to the ground, where a computer will develop a whole picture and send that to all pilots. Sophisticated drones could use that data without human intervention to sense conflicts with other aircraft.

Mr. Huerta said that the agency had already issued the first commercial license for drone use: In Alaska it gave ConocoPhillips, the oil company, permission to use a ScanEagle off the Alaska coast.

The United States uses the ScanEagle as a spy plane; Iran claims to have captured one and copied its design.

The F.A.A. has put several privacy requirements in place for the test program. Site operators will be required to publish privacy policies, covering how they will use the data they gather and how long they will retain it, among other steps.

Many elected officials celebrated the selection of sites in their jurisdictions. Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat from North Dakota, said the selection of Grand Forks would help the drone industry grow and “help make sure it can become a key part of North Dakota’s economy.”