Skip to content. Skip to main navigation.

 
Spring 2018
Archive

Inquiry Magazine Archive

×
 
 
 
 
Inspection

Eye in the Sky

Professor using $770,000-plus TxDOT grant to inspect roads with drones 

Man flying drone

Using flying machines to inspect the ground? That's what a team of engineers from UTA, Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi, and the Texas A&M Transportation Institute is doing for the Texas Department of Transportation. The agency awarded the group a two-year, $770,909 grant for the project.

Led by civil engineering Professor Anand Puppala, the researchers are investigating highways and railroads through unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs. They will determine how to use UAVs to perform remote sensing and collect high-definition photos while conducting pavement forensics. The team is focusing on the U.S. Highway 67 project site in Cleburne and U.S. Highway 82 near Bell in Fannin County. The UAVs also will collect data on the condition of railroad tracks and crossings in south-central Texas.

"It is safer and less expensive to use a UAV to check pavement performance characteristics because there is no need to close lanes and a person doesn't have to be on a roadway or active railroad tracks," Dr. Puppala says. "The high-resolution photos that we receive will provide as much information as an instrument on the pavement."

In addition to safety and cost, speed is another advantage to using UAVs instead of people.

"We will be able to transmit data from the UAV to a computer and process images very quickly," Puppala says. "We can then provide analysis within hours so TxDOT can make decisions immediately."

This research recently led to an additional NSF grant for remote surveys of debris in Houston after Hurricane Harvey.

Explore
More articles from this issue

Art Detective

CSI: Florence

Art Detective

Professor’s attention to detail helps right a Renaissance wrong

Mind Matters

Brainstorm

Mind Matters

Researchers from the colleges of engineering and science are confronting important questions related to the human brain, including how to better detect blast-related trauma in veterans and the effectiveness of laser therapy in improving cognitive function and even detecting cancer.

 
Inquiry
 

Office of the Vice President for Research
Box 19162 • Arlington, TX 76019-0162
© 2018 The University of Texas at Arlington. All rights reserved.

UT Arlington - Office of Research