Drones to Watch Over US Highways
Yahoo! News 02.04.2013
Drones could help human workers safeguard the 4 million miles of
One such project focused on studying the use of drones recently received $74,984 from the Federal Highway Administration and the Georgia Department of Transportation. Researchers plan to spend the next year figuring out how drones could help workers as they go about inspecting and maintaining the safety of public roads and highways.
The larger, aircraft-size Reaper or Global Hawk drones could spend hours surveying traffic conditions or carry light detection and ranging (LIDAR) equipment that can map terrain with millions of laser pulses. That could potentially replace the expensive use of manned helicopters doing the same job.
Irizarry gave the example of the spherical drones that mapped a huge alien base in the 2012 science fiction film "Prometheus" as an analogy for how today's larger drones could aid in above-ground laser mapping. He has also enlisted the help of Eric Johnson, an aerospace engineer at Georgia Tech, to figure out the best role for drones.
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