Denver, Colorado. Unmanned Experts LLC (UMEX) has entered into a cooperative agreement with the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) to investigate the utility of Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (SUAS) at vehicle crash scenes. The grant is formally entitled NIJ 2013-IJ-CX-K008 ‘Using Airborne Photogrammetry from Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems to Enable Faster Traffic Incident Clearance’

Traffic accidents are at once tragic, chaotic, frustrating and hazardous locations that present law enforcement officers and rescue personnel with some tremendous challenges: how to safely coordinate rescue efforts, control traffic, forensically document the site and clear the area as quickly as possible, without further injury or death.

Traffic-related fatalities are a leading cause of law enforcement officer (LEO) line-of-duty deaths. Coordinated and efficient incident clearance is a fundamental goal and priority for current traffic incident management programs. To date, ground-based photography and terrestrial photogrammetry are emerging preferred alternatives for expediting crash investigations. However the rapid spread of low-cost SUAS technology, allied with high-speed image processing applications, offer an opportunity to collect forensic-quality scene information, speed up investigations and incident clearance, and reduce the exposure of LEOs, responders, and the public to hazardous roadside conditions.

The Cooperative Agreement with NIJ will see UMEX initially focus on establishing a calibration capability for the research SUAS platform and methods. This should validate the metric quality and repeatability of the study. UMEX will then run trials on modeled traffic accident scenes to see if forensic standards can be met, to compare SUAS photogrammetric methods with other current methods and best practices, and to look for potential improvements in safety and efficiency.

Outreach to various North American law enforcement units has commenced and partnerships with both the NUAIR Alliance in New York and Massachusetts, and Ft Carson in Colorado have been established to provide range and subject matter expertise support. UMEX is submitting abstracts to present their findings, as well as a SUAS LE/accident scene concept of operations, at AUVSI, ASPRS and various other UAS and LE Conferences in the coming year.

This initial phase of work under this agreement is expected to be complete in December 2014.