Colorado DOT Tests Traffic Blimp
The Colorado Department of Transportation conducted a three-day evaluation of a helium-filled blimp to monitor traffic.
The demonstration was designed to evaluate the usefulness of higher-altitude camera views to obtain the “big picture” of traffic in the Denver area and help with incident management, according to CDOT.
“Aerostats are becoming more routinely used in a myriad of applications by law enforcement and other agencies, especially during major events. They are safe, easy to deploy and manage cost-effectively, CDOT said in a statement.
The June 10 test involved flying the blimp to about 400 feet and testing its interoperability with CDOT’s other cameras and fiber optic network.
The agency partnered SkySentry for the test of the 1,600-cubic-foot blimp, known as a Tactically Expedient Aerostat that is part balloon, part kite.
“We call it the elegance of elevation — that being up there and looking over a wide area will help them to decide what is causing these kinds of traffic backups and pileups and so on and resolve them for the future,” SkySentry President Charlie Lambert told CBS4 during the initial test.
The agency said the blimp could save money by reducing the number of existing cameras CDOT uses to monitor traffic.
