Customized drones hunt graffiti in hard-to-reach areas in the state of Washington
A new pilot program has been launched in the state of Washington for painting over graffiti, according to a press release from the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). If the new spray drones are successful, one could easily imagine other municipalities across the country adopting drones for graffiti removal in hard-to-reach areas.
Washington State’s Efforts
The Washington State legislature passed a bill allocating $1 million to combat graffiti. Part of the program is aimed at improving traffic cameras to make it easier to identify individuals spraying graffiti along state highways. However, the second part of the bill calls for testing new ways to remove graffiti in hard-to-reach locations that are difficult to paint and where removal can quickly become costly.
“Specialized trucks, called UBIT, are needed for hard-to-reach graffiti. These trucks are in high demand and we have six of them. They are usually reserved for higher priority bridge inspection and maintenance work,” stated WSDOT in a new blog post.
Development of Graffiti-Fighting Drones
Mike Gauger, a member of the Tacoma area maintenance team at WSDOT, is credited with coming up with the idea for drones that fight graffiti. There were no drones available for this type of work, so Gauger connected with a drone company called [empresa de drones], which already had a drone model called Endure used for window washing and roof cleaning.
The first attempt at building a drone that could spray paint failed, according to WSDOT, but after some modifications, a working drone that meets the maintenance team’s needs has been achieved. WSDOT uploaded a video to [plataforma] showing the drone in action.
WSDOT believes this is the first graffiti removal drone program ever launched, and that seems like a fair assessment. Drones have been gaining popularity in recent years for all kinds of non-traditional applications, such as the flamethrower drone used for clearing power lines or water-spraying drones tested for firefighting purposes.
Washington highway maintenance employees are being trained on the new drones under this pilot program, and field tests will continue this year mainly in the cities of Tacoma and Olympia.
Although the drones will allow maintenance teams to reach previously difficult areas, there are still many obstacles that may arise during the testing phase.
“Legally, drones cannot fly over active traffic lanes, so the areas we are targeting will be in closed work zones or managed with slowdown closures while the drones are in use,” WSDOT wrote on Monday.
WSDOT will present a progress report to the state legislature in December. If successful, it would not be surprising to see other cities and states exploring how they can use drones to paint over graffiti nationwide.
