Publication Details
How accurate are small drones for measuring microscopic traffic parameters?
VLAHOGIANNI, E.
GOLIAS, J.
Babinec Adam, Ing.
UnmannedAerial Vehicles, Drones, Microscopic Traffic Data, Intelligent TransportationSystems, Computer Vision
Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (sUAV or drones) have been oneof the latest tools for monitoring transportation infrastructure and operations.Their lower cost compared to current fixed location camera systems or MannedAerial Vehicles and their ability to read just their view area depending on thesituation they face, make them a promising tool of collecting both macroscopicand microscopic data. However, although drone technology and computer visiontechniques are advancing fast, there is little information on how accurate andreliable they are for collecting microscopic traffic data. In this paper, weexamine the potential of using sUAV as part of the ITS infrastructure as a wayof extracting naturalistic trajectory data from aerial video footage from a lowvolume four-way intersection and a pedestrian passage. Moreover, the accuracyof speed data collected from a drone compared to data collected from anOn-Board Diagnostics II (OBD-II) device is examined. For this, a controlledexperiment where the vehicle was driven in various speeds and the drone flew inranging altitudes was conducted. Results show that accuracy is highly dependenton the stabilization of the video and the geo-reference procedure. Moreover,the capabilities of such systems are examined in traffic applications and theway they can be part of future transportation infrastructure is discussed.
@article{BUT162078,
author="BARMPOUNAKIS, E. and VLAHOGIANNI, E. and GOLIAS, J. and BABINEC, A.",
title="How accurate are small drones for measuring microscopic traffic parameters?",
journal="Transportation Letters",
year="2017",
volume="9",
number="5",
pages="1--9",
doi="10.1080/19427867.2017.1354433",
issn="1942-7875",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19427867.2017.1354433"
}