The Libramiento Hermosillo (Hermosillo Bypass) project has just concluded a pilot for drone patrolling on the highway. During this phase, the partnership between Egis and DronGuard, a Mexican drone start-up, demonstrated the capacity of drones to replace manned patrols for road inspection and event detection.
It is a first concrete sign of how technology can change the way we monitor a highway: with more autonomous tours, without exposing people to risk, and with real-time information available to those who make the decisions.
How it works: from autonomous flight to human decision
The drone and its platform can fully autonomously engage reconnaissance tours along the highway. Using light and infrared sensors, they detect any object, animal or person on or near the road.
When something is detected, an alert is sent to the Control Center. There, an operator can take over the flight, assess the situation and, if necessary, dispatch a road assistance unit. Technology handles the tour and the detection; the decision remains in people's hands.
A desert that put the technology to the test
The Sonoran Desert proved a demanding setting for the DJI Matrice 4TD drone, with heat and wind as everyday operating conditions. Throughout the pilot, the team completed more than 500 flights, a volume that made it possible to assess the solution's performance in real conditions, not just in controlled tests.
Egis and DronGuard: innovation built through partnership
The pilot is the result of combining Egis's experience in highway operations with the technological development of a Mexican start-up. That combination made it possible to test the solution directly on the infrastructure, under the safety and availability demands of a road operation.
Partnerships like this reflect a way of innovating that seeks results applicable to day-to-day work: identifying an operational need, testing a technology in the field and learning from it.
What comes next: automation, artificial intelligence and drone flocks
With the development of automated flight and AI, we hope to demonstrate that drones, and even drone flocks, are a viable option for road monitoring. The vision is for them to replace costly investments in intelligent transport systems (ITS) and provide risk-free surveillance that also reduces the time patrollers spend on the asset.
The Libramiento Hermosillo pilot is a step toward that goal: a demonstration of how innovation can help us anticipate the challenges of road operations and better protect those who work on the road.
