Since the launch of the low-altitude airspace management reform in 2010, the subsequent addition of the "low-altitude economy" in the national plan in 2021, and the gradual refinement of UAV application and flight management regulations in 2023, policies have continued to drive the development and application of UAVs in the transport sector.
2010: The "Opinions on Deepening the Reform of Low-Altitude Airspace Management in China" document marked the start of the low-altitude airspace management reform. It described the overall objectives, the time-bound requirements, the division of tasks, and the measures to be taken for the 2011-2020 reform period.
2021: The "National Comprehensive Three-Dimensional Transportation Network Planning Outline" unveiled the development of the transportation platform economy, hub economy, corridor economy, and low-altitude economy, thus introducing the "low-altitude economy" concept in a national plan for the first time.
September 2023: In "Opinions of the Ministry of Transport on Promoting the Digital Transformation of Highways and Accelerating the Construction and Development of Smart Highways," UAV usage in different business areas was mentioned multiple times. It was recognized that software and hardware related to maintenance should be upgraded to their full potential to achieve automated and UAV inspection; also, for the perception of the road network, new methods such as UAVs and on-board terminal data uploads were considered.
May 2023: The Interim Regulations on the Flight Management of Unmanned Aircraft", which is a legislative tool of the Ministry of Transport of the People's Republic of China (MOT), was officially introduced on January 1, 2024, marking a significant step towards a more comprehensive and standardized regulatory framework for the UAV industry.
May 2024: The "Notice on Calling for Pilot Projects for the Pilot Application of Low-Altitude UAVs in Highway Inspection and Patrolling" was specifically aimed at bridge inspection, slope inspection, emergency rush repair, and management support, and brought together 21 pilot projects across the country.
Against this backdrop, industry insiders have been able to identify four scenarios where UAVs could be used in a practical and highly demanding way:
Bridge Inspection: Outfitted with high-resolution optical cameras, infrared thermal imaging, and AI crack detection software, drones perform regular inspections of bridges based on data-stored analyses such as cracks, shifts, rust, and anti-collision installations, thus providing uninterrupted data for structural health monitoring.
Slope Inspection: Slope surveillance usually takes place in locations with significant height variations and dense vegetation, which are thus out of reach for conventional human or vehicle-based methods. With drones, 3D mapping and animated comparisons are made to locate any shelf failures, works of breaking, or settlements that could be invisible.
Emergency Rush Repair: Regardless of whether the situation involves a natural disaster or a sudden accident, UAVs can be the first responders that arrive at the time and place to give an overview also of the most important details for command and dispatch. A few companies have already taken the step of putting UAVs, first aid boxes, loudspeakers, and lighting equipment together to make a system capable of "emergency airdrop loudspeaker announcement + night search and rescue".
Management Support: The data from the frequent inspections is fed to the operation and management platforms of the expressway, thus acting as the real-time input for digital twin highways and hence, providing the underlying support for intelligent operation, maintenance decision-making, and cost control.
UAVs are on their way to becoming a part of transportation practices you can hardly do without them through the encouragement of the government and the deepening of the scenarios. Here are the construction thoughts of three major platforms.
UAV Unified Management and Control and Service Platform
Guangdong Province, in collaboration with the expressway industry, has constructed a group-level UAV Unified Management and Control and Service Platform to resolve difficulties like unclear airspace separation, irrational route planning, and scarce resource sharing in UAV applications. The platform, through its features such as high-precision maps, streaming media platforms, and AI capabilities, reflects the establishment of a system, management, and standardization of UAVs in expressway scenarios, thus facilitating the simplification of UAV technology application and the empowerment of the expressway industry.
System Architecture
This platform is capable of separating the functions of business applications and UAVs and hence achieves the unified construction of common UAV application capabilities. Also, it makes it easier to manage airspace flight, route planning, and resource sharing, along with unified data control. It is a great tool for the digital transformation of expressways.
Functional Architecture
Air traffic service system of the platform is the center that integrates real-time response, dynamic dispatch, and personalized services. It offers general operation services such as UAV access, visual route planning, route resource application and management, image data transmission and storage, data AI empowerment, and airspace flight management. Its application scenarios include one of the following.
Daily Inspection: Conducting different types of inspections such as surface, pavement, slope, control area, and tunnel entrance to automatically identify various issues.
Major Holiday Inspection: Through various means such as monitoring traffic conditions, congestion detection, remote image transmission, traffic guidance, and violation capture, the traffic police work efficiency will be highly improved.
Emergency Rescue: Through aerial photography, evidence collection, traffic guidance, and direction indication, lost time in rescue situations will be minimized while continuing to enhance the UAV and transportation industries' integration.
AI-UAV Linked Expressway Global Monitoring Integrated Platform
Large model algorithms are utilized in this platform to perform deep measurements on historical data and real-time traffic information leading to an accurate prediction of accident risks and in-transit vehicle behavior monitoring. When potential risks are discovered, the AI algorithm triggers the UAV linkage mechanism.
Core Functions
Digital Cockpit: The interface offers a wide range of a bird's eye view such as live traffic data, vehicle trajectories, UAV inspection images, and abnormal warnings, supporting thorough analysis of traffic and evaluation of driver behavior which ultimately leads to a more efficient decision-making process.
Accident Linkage Mechanism: Not only does this system determine accident-prone areas automatically, it also sends dispatch signals to the nearest UAVs for the scene, employs RSU antennas for scanning and Cloud AI for recognition remotely, and through live broadcasts and flashing lights it effectively warns the public and helps reduce the occurrence of secondary accidents.
In-Transit Vehicle Tracking: It tracks in real-time all of the vehicles supporting queries on vehicle entry information, driving paths, and historical trajectories; it also aids in the identification of vehicle types such as hazardous material transport vehicles which present a high level of risk.
Global Big Data Lake: The lake holds data and information of over 1 billion pieces from across the region and various events supporting large model training and real-time generation of traffic dynamic data by means of stream computing technology.
UAV-Based Road and Bridge Disease Detection System
The system identifies and addresses a major challenge of the manual bridge disease detection methods; inefficiency, high cost, detection omissions, and safety risks by automating the process. The system's features include autonomous obstacle avoidance, road, and bridge disease detection, and the positioning of the autonomous cruise. The system is utilized through a combination of a visual desktop control system and a cloud service platform thereby allowing easy operation and real-time monitoring and information display.
Key Technologies and Functions
UAV Obstacle Avoidance: Ensures safe image collection during cruise by avoiding obstacles.
UAV Positioning: Obtains real-time positions through lidar, with initial displacement set to zero and initial yaw value based on IMU measurements relative to the world coordinate system.
Disease Identification: Processes UAV-transmitted image data to detect specific road and bridge diseases.
Disease Detection: Involves model construction (training machine learning/deep learning models with a large number of image samples) and detection matching. It optimizes MoCov2 and YOLOv4 models by adding 3D point cloud position features and using dilated convolution to improve feature extraction.
The system also includes 3D geographic information system-based disease identification and information management and early warning functions, constructing a road and bridge disease characteristic knowledge base and object model library to support intelligent management of road and bridge assets.
Reference Materials
[1] Li Fang, Xing Wanyong, Zhang Qu, et al. Reflections on the Application of UAVs in Expressways Under the Economic Background[J]. China Communications Informationization, 2025(02):131-134.
[2] Suzhou Communications Investment Group: Integrated Platform for Full-Domain Monitoring of Expressways via AI-UAV Linkage
[EB/OL]. [2025-07-24]. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/a_2yVpbgu7JqicRBPHERNA
[3] Duan Xuefeng. Low-Altitude Inspection Scheme for Expressways in Ningxia
(The images in this article are generated by Doubao AI)
