DriveOhio to monitor traffic and road incidents with drones

DriveOhio will use unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) to understand how to manage traffic, roadway incidents and roadway conditions along the 33 Smart Mobility Corridor from 1 July. The three-year project, valued $5.9m, is intended to complement autonomous and connected vehicle tests along the 35-mile stretch between Dublin and East Liberty.
June 8, 2018 Read time: 2 mins
DriveOhio will use unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) to understand how to manage traffic, roadway incidents and roadway conditions along the 33 Smart Mobility Corridor from 1 July. The three-year project, valued $5.9m, is intended to complement autonomous and connected vehicle tests along the 35-mile stretch between Dublin and East Liberty.


This study stems from a partnership between DriveOhio’s UAS Center and the Ohio State University College of Engineering.

The research will be carried out by air and ground vehicles while the drones will monitor traffic and incident response along with the state's fixed-location traffic camera system. The UAS will interact with sensors and communication equipment to feed data into the state’s traffic management centre.

Additionally, the initiative will use sensors and communication devices to ensure unmanned aircraft will not collide with each other or with small planes and helicopters.

Fred Judson, director of DriveOhio’s UAS Center, says: “This research project will make the development of that safety system a priority so that other aircraft operations such as package delivery and air taxi services can be explored down the road.”

Other members involved in the project include Cal Analytics, Gannett Fleming, Airxos, Gryphon Sensors, Transportation Research Center, Woolpert, the Ohio State University Airport and Midwest Air Traffic Control.

Urban Traffic Control

Related Content

  • October 26, 2017
    Data collection becoming a crowded market
    New ways of gathering data can revolutionise traffic and travel management, so is the writing on the wall for the traditional methods? Jon Masters reports. There are two big industries that stand to be revolutionised by massive increases in data – healthcare and transportation, says Finlay Clarke, the UK managing director of the smartphone sat nav traffic app, Waze. “At present we’re really only at the start of how cities, in particular, will be transformed,” he says.
    Read More
  • April 14, 2025
    Lidar lets planners see big picture in Chattanooga
    The city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, is attempting to make its streets safer by using the largest deployment of Lidar-based traffic detection in the US. Adam Hill reports…
    Read More
  • March 21, 2017
    NTU Singapore and Schaeffler set up joint lab to develop smart mobility devices
    Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU) and Germany’s Schaeffler Group are collaborating in a new joint research laboratory at the university, the Schaeffler Hub for Advanced REsearch at NTU (SHARE at NTU), to tackle transportation challenges for Singapore within the context of the country’s Smart Nation vision. The lab will study various aspects of personal urban mobility and intelligent transportation systems for mega cities of the future. The research projects include studying human user beh
    Read More
  • July 18, 2012
    Plug and play approach unifies workzone ITS
    Caltrans District 7 is finalising a ConOps document which will detail a plug-and-play to work zone ITS operation. The organisation's Allen Z. Chen elaborates. Before August is out, on current planning, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) District 7 (which covers Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, with a combined population of close to 11 million people) intends to have finalised a Concept of Operations (ConOps) document dealing with Work Zone Transportation Management Systems (WZTMS). The
    Read More

Highlighted Content