Inspection Drones for Ensuring Safety in Transport Infrastructures

Drones are being used to perform inspections of roadways and railways. Industrial, research and academic experts in infrastructure inspection, energy harvesting, artificial intelligence, communications, and drone technology are joining forces to help increase the safety of the European civil transport system. Through the EU-funded Drones4Safety project, they are building a cooperative, autonomous, self-recharging and continuously operating drone system for autonomous, accurate and frequent inspections of transport infrastructures. This new system will be made available to railway and bridge operators to remotely monitor the status of their infrastructures and notifying them if a fault is detected. The project will use satellite and open maps, and will develop and improve artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to optimise inspection results. Drones4Safety's outcomes will be presented to transportation operators in the form of software services and hardware drone systems.