Drones for Traffic Flow Analysis of Urban Roundabouts

The reliability of traffic measurement data becomes an essential prerequisite for road traffic studies, in order to respond effectively to the major challenges caused by the significant growth in vehicle volumes on the road network. Today several techniques are used to obtain these count data, but they have disadvantages such as the limited range of action, sometimes requiring the coupling of several sensors, insufficient processing time, or degradation of the equipment, which requires high maintenance costs for local authorities. Drone technology is quickly accepted as a very dynamic and reliable technique for the collection of detailed and accurate traffic data. The current paper investigates, through a real-life case study in an urban roundabout, the potential offered by drones for traffic measurements in order to overcome certain difficulties encountered by conventional sensors. The counting data from the drones provides ease of processing and a comprehensive view of the operation of the study area. The results from drone videos show relative errors mostly less than 10% and low absolute errors.