AB Keli? prieži?ra – a state-owned company that maintains more than 21,000km of national roads – has joined forces with technology companies Thrust and Agmis to introduce the AI-powered drone-based system for automated road inspection. The joint project, called GreenBee, aims to improve the quality and scope of road network inspection and also to reduce CO2 emissions created while performing inspection tasks.

Currently road inspections are performed using specialist vehicles that drive slowly, allowing visual inspection of the infrastructure. Depending on the type of the road, these inspections are performed monthly, weekly or sometimes daily. Each year road inspection vehicles travel thousands of kilometres, emitting tonnes of CO2.

With GreenBee road inspection, vehicles will be replaced by UAVs equipped with high-definition cameras and multiple sensors. The drones will fly along the inspection routes and gather data for further analysis. Acquired video and sensor data will be analysed by employing AI and computer vision technologies to identify defects and troublespots.