Traffic analysis using a drone

ViNotion has, in collaboration with Antea Group, Rijkswaterstaat, Delft Dynamics and Dufec,  used a cable-connected drone to count traffic on the A1 highway near Muiden.  The goal of this project was as follows:

1. Demonstrate that a cabled drone is a safe and efficient means for traffic analysis on national roads.
2. Demonstrate that automated traffic analysis using a drone can achieve high accuracy and is a competitive alternative to counting with traditional means, such as loops, stationary cameras and observers. 

The challenge lies in creating a model from different viewing angles and heights, such that vehicles are robustly detected and tracked. This enables automatic traffic analysis for large crossings from a drone. Results show that the analysis from a drone is more accurate than counting by manual observers, with an achieved accuracy of 98%.