Determination and recognition of road traffic condition using drones

By | 02.03.2018

In 2014-2017 “PAWLIN Technologies” successfully completed a research project “Developing of intellectual algorithms to detect and recognize road traffic condition for patrol drone systems using GLONASS”

As a result of this project we developed methods that allow to recognize and analyse:

  1. road zone
  2. single vehicles (moving or standing)
  3. moving speed of single vehicles and traffic
  4. sorts of road incidents
  5. snow-covering
  6. tracking single vehicles

Example video received from drone with detected vehicles of different types

This system may provide the following features in the future (some of them are automatic):

  1. Snow-covering analysis
  2. Detecting incorrectly parked vehicles (not only on the roads)
  3. Finding traffic jams and narrows
  4. Determining density and speed of traffic
  5. Detecting dangerous traffic situations
  6. Detecting crowded people
  7. Detecting large puddles, sufficient defects, opened hatches, obstacles, etc
  8. Detecting fallen trees (not only on the roads)
  9. Detecting incorrectly placed vehicles (parks and protected areas, pedestrian zones, water, etc)
  10. Determining dust on parking places
  11. Detecting abandoned vehicles
  12. Monitoring significant anomalies (erosions, washouts, liquid spillages, color changing in reservoirs (finding water pollutions)
  13. Finding lost people in parks, forests, fields, on closed territories
  14. Greenery monitoring (detecting greenery diseases)
  15. Other tasks that can be done using monitoring from air. For example, monitoring chemical composition of air, smoke, fire, finding packs of dogs, junk yards, illegal constructions, determining water level in reservoirs, finding pollution, noise, smoke sources.

Nowadays gathering such data using static cameras is impossible due to poor angle of view. Data from satellites is not enough fast and does not always has sufficient resolution. However, soon this data can be also used. Other data sources, such as monitoring made by police and city staff, reports made by citizens, “Yandex Traffic Jams” service cannot provide a complete picture of traffic condition on the roads and environment condition also.

With the help of already developed solutions “PAWLIN Technologies” is able to create and suggest to Moscow government a system for monitoring traffic conditions on the roads and environment condition using drones.