Drones can be used in a variety of ways – not just for flying around and playing with them, they can be used in traffic surveillance and management. Drones can serve as eyes in the skies. 

The present system of fixed cameras is getting a bit inefficient as they cannot have a wide range of views, whereas drones have an aerial view. 

The information received from the drones would quicken the response mechanism and help in providing commuters with information to avoid congestion and traffic jams. The visuals received from the drones will also hasten emergency services in the event of accidents.

Here are some of the ways drones can be used for traffic management. 

Aerial Survey and Monitoring: 

Drones can take pictures and videos of the objects moving on the roads from an angle that is difficult from the ground level. Hiring helicopters would be difficult and expensive, moreover, they cannot be used in the middle of the roads. 

Lightweight, easy-to-operate drones can help in providing accurate data and they can help in case of emergencies. Information received from the drones can be analyzed and the perfect location of the accidents can be identified. This way, the rescue teams can reach the destination faster. 

Civil Construction Planning:

Cities are expanding and the town planners need to have perfect data to plan the city, they need to analyze the traffic data, road capacity, and traffic flow, etc to come up with strategies that can avoid congestion on the roads. This information can be easily gathered by Drones which can take pics and videos from above the ground level. 

Once the information is gathered, perfect planning is possible as the data is deciphered and put to use in an intelligent way. 

The data collected from the drones can be used for various analysis and to study behavior patterns of the vehicular traffic. Peak hours, rush hours, and other critical information can be traced by going through the data provided by these drones thereby providing effective city planning.

Maintain Law & Order:

Drones can also be used to chase /catch any speeding vehicle. Once the drone spots a suspect it will relay information to officers further along the road so they can pull them over. 

Also, these drones can have night vision which will help during both night and day at low altitudes. With such features, police personnel can be on alert at all times and they need not keep a manual check at different checkpoints. 

Emergency Response:

If a person has a heart attack in mids of heavy traffic jam, a defibrillator can be taken to that person via a drone. This drone can have a monitor attached to it and can explain how to use the defibrillator to a bystander. This way, lives can be saved during emergency situations. 

Drones also can carry required medicine and information to the exact location, in case of traffic chaos. 

How Can Software Enhance Capabilities of Drones For Law Enforcement Purposes:

Drones by themselves have a few limitations, for example, mobilizing a large fleet of drones in an orderly fashion. Such limitations can be easily overcome by using a fleet management system like FlytNow, Kittyhawk, etc.

A fleet management system is a software solution that helps in:

• Providing scalability: It provides scalability to the operator so that they can control and manage many drones from a single dashboard.
• Automating drone specific activities: Managing a single drone is very different from managing a fleet of drones, the increase in number requires certain kinds of automation that only a fleet management system provides.
• Providing AI-advantage: A Fleet Management System provides advanced AI-based features like Precision landing, Collision Avoidance System (CAS), and Object detection, which are considered essential for traffic control.

How does a fleet management system work

Let us take the example of FlytNow, it is a cloud-based application that provides a unified dashboard that provides live video information from all the drones which are connected to it and can also be used as a command center.

Drones are connected to the fleet management system, DJI drones are connected using our mobile app and custom drones are connected via the SBC.

Here are few benefits that drone fleet management systems provide with regards to Traffic Management?

• Fleet Management Systems come fully loaded with advanced mission planner that allows the operators to release many drones from a single location as an emergency response. 
• Operators can plan the exact route of the drones, so they can follow without human intervention, which in case of an health emergency could help save someone’s life.
• The Fleet management system also allows for live video surveillance from multiple drones to a single dashboard, this could be very useful in checking the road for damages.
• Another cool feature is that law enforcement can capture live video of the ongoing traffic and take into account everyone who is breaking the rules, this makes the job of an officer very easy to target the lawbreaker.
• FlytNow, for example, comes with a set of REST API’s which are used to integrate with emergency response systems like 911, such integration will allow the operator to quickly dispatch drones from their dashboard on receiving a distress signal.
• AI features, like object detection, can be used in search and rescue operations where a drone, which is flying can cover a large area and alert the people in charge when the missing person is found.

Summary:

In this article, we have seen how drones are of help in traffic surveillance and traffic management. We have also covered how software solutions such as fleet management systems make such operations easy to accomplish, how it makes the handling of drones on a large scale a reality and we finally learned the benefits of using such systems.