NAVISP-EL2-144: “VESTA - UAV-powEred and cyber-Safe smarT roAds”

Last Updated: 06/06/2025 08:35     Created at: 06/06/2025 08:15

On Wednesday May 28th, The final presentation of the NAVISP EL2-144 project, titled "VESTA-UAV-powEred and cyber-Safe smart roAds", was presented by the project coalition including AIVIEWGROUP S.r.l, NEXT Ingegneria dei Sistemi S.p.A., and SecSI S.r.l., who together developed an innovative solution of utilizing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to enable traffic monitoring and road safety for smart mobility, with a strong emphasis on cybersecurity. Some of the highlights included:

• A presentation of the 4-layer architecture including the layers of Users, Applications, Infrastructure and Data.
• An overview of threat models and the layered defences including for communication protocols and anomaly detection.
• Attendees saw video results from real-world tests drawn from partnership with an Italian highway operator using commercial drones, showcasing the mission control software and AI inspection features.
• The road operators were pleased to witness successful detection of road surface defects and identification of small obstacles. Operators in other domains including rail are also interested to explore after this successful demonstration.

Drone monitoring for smart mobility has a promising future to make roads safer, with more frequent inspections at a fraction of the cost of manual inspections.
The project was funded by NAVISP Element 2. The slides can be found here.