Surface Transportation Surveillance from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) promise a low cost means to achieve a "bird's eye view" and a rapid response for a wide array of transportation operations and planning applications, including incident response, coordination among a network of traffic signals, traveler information, emergency vehicle guidance, and measurement of typical roadway usage. However, many obstacles to operational use exist, including ambiguous and sometimes prohibitively restrictive Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) guidelines and liability concerns. This paper expands on these benefits and barriers to deployment and discusses preliminary results of a field experiment in which a UAV was used to monitor freeway conditions, track vehicle movements in an intersection, observe conditions on a network of roadways, and monitor parking lot utilization. This extended field experiment provides a strong indication that the application of the UAV technology to surface transportation surveillance seems viable and potentially valuable. In addition, the experiment clearly points to the need for continued experimentation and refinement to develop and document the potential benefits and familiarize the operations community with this emerging technology.