Drones fly above Somerville to study drivers, cyclists

SOMERVILLE - Researchers from UMass Amherst are using drones to study traffic patterns between drivers and bicyclists .

"I'm going up," drone pilot Ryan Wicks said. "I'll let you know what I'm at altitude."

Wicks along with three other pilots deployed drones up to 400 feet above the streets of Somerville Friday in hopes of making the roadways safer.

"Where we see potential risks," Dr. Eleni Christofa said. "Potential near misses, as we call them."

Protecting cyclists on busy streets

Dr. Christofa, a civil and environmental engineering professor, is leading the team to improve safety for bicyclists in high density areas, like Somerville.

"They have a lot of infrastructure here and a lot of bicyclists," she said of Somerville.

Road safety is at the top of mind of many cyclists .

"A bicyclist actually just died earlier this week," Isabel Ledsky told WBZ-TV as she rode by on her bike.

A 62-year-old man was struck and killed by an SUV on Memorial Drive in Cambridge Monday while biking in rush hour traffic.

It's a tragic reminder of how dangerous the streets can be.

"There are still some really tight corners. Places where bike lanes merge suddenly into the street," Ledsky explained.

Drones offer new perspective on traffic

That's where Dr. Christofa and her team comes in. They deployed four drones in the air and pressed record.

"If the video frame holds still, you can get information of how fast they're going, where they come from, where they go to," Wicks said.

Software then identifies cars, bicyclists and pedestrians. The angle from up above gives them an advantage like never before.

"Being on the ground looking down a 500-foot stretch of road is ill-conditioned to be able to identify individuals, and sometimes your view is blocked," Wicks said. "If you can get up to 400 feet for instance, the footprint that you can see from a single perspective is around 550-600 feet, sometimes 700 feet depending on the lens."

With that hard data, the team can identify what works and what doesn't.

"Something you'll see is there will be these fence posts, like bollards down bike paths, and then you'll see they no longer happen because cars knock them down," Ledsky said. "Maybe with this birds-eye view, you can actually see how the cars are using the intersection."

The team will deploy the drones again on Monday.