Case Study: Using Tethered Drones with GoodVision’s Traffic Analytics for Traffic Surveys in Singapore
By: Daniel Stofan
Tags: Surveys, Analytics, Transportation, Traffic, Drones

In this article, you will learn:

Understand the key points for preparing for a traffic study and using the Volarious V-Line Tethered System for unlimited flight time Familiarise with using the GoodVision Video Insights traffic analytics platform to gather insights from the traffic data

Fig. 1

1. Planning for the shoot

Before going to the traffic site, we plotted out the distance and the area of traffic site we wanted to capture and made sure it is within the covered field of view of the drone. (The field of view is mentioned in the video and seen in Fig. 1)

Fig. 2

We checked the weather before going the traffic site. (Fig. 2)

Fig. 3

2. Things to Bring

Mavic Drone with RC Smart Controller*

Portable Charger with Type-C cable

V-Line Tethered station with V-Line Power Module

x6 TB47S Batteries*

SD Card

GoodVision Video Insights platform account, which you can get at my.goodvisionlive.com

A set of fresh set of batteries is x6 TB47S Batteries will last for two hours long. For long operation, you may choose to bring more fully-charged set of TB47S batteries. Alternatively, you can bring an AC generator.

3. Configuration

Keep camera angle from -90 to -45 degrees ideally if you plan to analyse pedestrian traffic too. If you are looking for a higher drone shot of vehicular traffic, you can keep the drone at a straight down angle. We flew the drone within the variable distance of 15–30 meters from traffic site. We recorded the video with 24 FPS and resolution of 4K. By following this guide, you will get the most suitable traffic footage videos that can be used for processing and analytics.

Fig. 4

4. Traffic Analytics In GoodVision Video Insights

Recorded drone footage was uploaded and processed with GoodVision Video Insights. The platform provided us with a very clear view of the traffic flows on the junction. Our video was 2 hours long and divided into 20 separate video files. We were impressed how simple it was to upload the footage, as GoodVision’s platform manages it all automatically and stitches all your files without your necessary intervention. A bonus was, that GoodVision automatically stabilised all drone videos and removed all drone movements caused by the strong wind.

“GoodVision’s traffic analytics platform is so powerful and easy to use. It is just the right tool for anyone looking to collect and analyse traffic data quickly and easily.” (Douglas Wong, Volarious)

GoodVision Video Insights user dashboard

Clear distinction of traffic lanes allowed us to precisely select traffic movements our client needed to analyse. From the drone survey, we were looking to obtain the following parameters:

Multimodal traffic counts Vehicle speed Vehicle gaps on each entry to the junction

All of these parameters we were able to obtain very precisely in the matter of seconds in the platform, and it was also exported in the Excel report vehicle by vehicle. This way we have saved a significant amount of time on traffic data collection versus the manual traffic counters our clients were using before. The detail and granularity of traffic data provided by GoodVision is unreachable for any conventional method to deliver.

Both solutions are available to users globally. Please reach out to us at info@goodvisionlive.com if you want to know more.

Visit GoodVision’s website and the LinkedIn profile if you want to know more about what GoodVision does. If you want to try our traffic analytics platform for free, visit my.goodvisionlive.com.