UMass Drone Program Aims to Make City Streets Safer for Cyclists
Drones represent one of the fastest-growing industries, with applications in countless commercial, security, and educational fields. Due to the growing demand for drones, nearly every secondary education school in the United States now has a drone program. Many of these programs offer areas of study that allow students to become drone operators or developers, while others provide unique opportunities for students and researchers to apply drone technology. One notable example is at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) in Amherst, MA.
Located in Marston Hall, UMassAir is the university’s dedicated drone hub. It collaborates with surrounding universities and the UMass Transportation Center to operate the Aviation Research and Training Initiative at the Westover Air Reserve Base and the Westover Metropolitan Airport, which is designated as the Federal Aviation Administration’s Northeast Unoccupied Aircraft Test Site. As stated on the department’s website, the objectives of UMassAir are to “Conduct Unoccupied Aerial Systems (UAS)-based research; Educate the next generation of scientists, engineers, and professionals on safe UAS practice; and, Offer UAS contract services, including aerial image capture and data processing.”
Professor of Civil Engineering Dr. Eleni Christofa is one of the educators at UMass taking advantage of UMassAir’s drone programs. Dr. Christofa specializes in traffic-related infrastructure for public safety. According to her bio, ” Dr. Christofa is interested in developing a lab that will focus on more efficient and sustainable traffic management strategies for urban transportation networks. With the main interest being the use of signal control systems that are widely available in cities to better manage multimodal traffic in order to mitigate congestion and the related externalities, i.e., increased travel time, emissions, etc.”
This past summer, a 62-year-old man was tragically killed while riding a bicycle after being struck by an SUV during rush hour traffic in Cambridge. Reports have shown that accidents involving cyclists and vehicles have increased recently in areas like Boston, Amherst, Cambridge, and Somerville. “They have a lot of infrastructure here and many bicyclists,” commented Dr. Christofa. She hopes that by using drones to monitor traffic areas shared by cyclists and vehicles, safety parameters can be established. To do this, Dr. Christofa and her students are collaborating with UMass Transportation, UMassAir, and an urban mobility technology development firm from Switzerland, Mobilysis.
Mobilysis began at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in the Urban Transportation Systems Lab. In 2022, Manos Barmpounakis founded Mobilysis to collect and analyze urban traffic data. Working with Dr. Christofa marks the company’s first U.S. client. “They chose our solution because it was the only way to collect the specialized data they needed to study bike-vehicle interactions,” Mr. Barmpounakis stated. “Traditional methods couldn’t provide the same level of accuracy and information, especially for such complex multimodal traffic environments. Mobilysis designed a complex experiment with a swarm of 5 drones collecting detailed trajectory data for vehicles and bicycles in high-risk areas in Boston. Access to this high-quality data, enables it to carry out high-quality R&D to improve road safety, particularly for vulnerable road users such as cyclists.”
The drone research program began in September 2024. Drone operator Ryan Wicks and the Departmental Assistant to the UMass Transportation Center piloted the drones with Dr. Christofa in Somerville. The drones were flown at an altitude of 400 feet in high-traffic areas during slow and peak traffic times. The data collected will be analyzed using software from Mobilysis. “The two-fold objective of the study,” as explained by Dr. Christofa, “is to implement a large-scale experiment with drones to gather detailed modal trajectories and to utilize these data to develop surrogate safety measures for evaluating the impact of bicycle infrastructure treatments on bicyclist and motorist safety.”
As the integration of drone technology into urban traffic management continues to evolve, initiatives like the collaboration between UMass Transportation, UMassAir, and Mobilysis represent a significant step toward enhancing safety for cyclists and all road users. By leveraging innovative research and partnerships, we can pave the way for smarter, safer cities where all individuals can navigate their environments with confidence. The efforts of Dr. Christofa and her team not only highlight the importance of data-driven solutions but also underscore the potential for drone technology to transform public safety in our increasingly complex transportation systems.
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