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The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday said that about 181,000 drone users had registered in the two and half weeks since the agency began requiring registration of the popular machines.

The database, for recreational users of drones weighing between a half pound and 55 pounds, is intended keep owners accountable for their use of the remote-controlled flying robots that have prompted safety and privacy complaints. It was announced in November and opened days before Christmas. The database, which will cost $5 per user starting in two weeks, tracks the names, home addresses and email addresses of users. Drone operators are required to mark drones with a registration number given by the F.A.A. for law enforcement.

The agency had estimated that more than 700,000 drones would be sold around Christmas. It did not give updated estimates on drone sales on Wednesday, nor did it say how many users may not be registered yet.

But at a news conference at the International CES in Las Vegas, Michael Huerta, the agency’s administrator, indicated that many users had not registered their drones and said he recognized the difficulty in informing the public about the requirement. The Consumer Technology Association said at the news conference that it expected 1 million recreational drones to be sold in 2016.

“Now that we have set up the registration system, our challenge is to make sure everyone is aware of the requirement and registers,” Mr. Huerta said. Recreational users who do not register can face penalties of as much as $27,500.

Charged by Congress in 2012 to come up with first-time rules for the then-nascent drone industry, the F.A.A. had struggled with the order even as sales of drones soared and reports of crashes and near-misses with airplanes grew. Lax federal rules have prompted many cities and states to come up with stronger rules that have spurred clashes with the federal agency.

2016 International CES

Companies have clamored for permission to use drones for activities like land inspections, wedding photography and package deliveries.

Silicon Valley has been focused on the F.A.A.’s pending rules for commercial drones, which are generally banned. Mr. Huerta said commercial rules would be completed by late spring and would most likely allow people like farmers and real estate agents to fly drones with some restrictions. The rules may require that the machines be flown during the day, below 500 feet, and within the line of sight of the person flying it. Those rules, however, would still prevent Amazon‘s and Google‘s ambitions to one day use drones to deliver packages. The companies have pushed for the F.A.A. to allow them to fly delivery drones beyond the line of sight of an operator, an important rule that would allow them to send multiple drones from a warehouse and operate the machines by a centralized computer.

“A lot of our recent public focus has been on recreational drones, but we’ve also been working on a rule that will allow routine, safe commercial and other nonhobby operations of small unmanned aircraft,” Mr. Huerta said.