The specially designed, unmanned vehicles are upgrades to existing spray drones and can cover unwanted graffiti in hard-to-reach places such as high walls, bridges and walkways.
Bridges, dilapidated buildings down to the train carriages and bus stops. Instead of paintbrushes, aspiring artists are equipped with spray paints, brushes, ladders and unleash their talents against a backdrop of a grey cityscape, unfortunate for us. The result? It’s subjective. But what happens when graffiti translates into unsightly “tag” scribbles, offensive images or fan and political slogans? The vandalism of public spaces is an issue that now affects many big cities. And one of them has decided to enlist a swarm of drones in order to solve it. These unmanned flying vehicles, will result from modifications to already existing drones that include spraying capability, and can cover up unwanted graffiti even in hard-to-reach places so the Washington, D.C., United States & Department of Transportation (WSDOT) recently rolled out a building cleaning program. The idea came about when the Department’s related agency was asked for the second time in a week to remove graffiti with offensive images that distracted drivers. For this particular job, special forklift trucks were needed, the fleet of which is in short supply as they are necessary for many other jobs taking place in the city. At the same time, the service manager was part of a task force that used drones for bridge inspections. Equipped with high-resolution cameras, the drones, reaching places that would not be easy for employees, completed his inspections quickly, without risk to anyone and saving the city’s resources. The “epiphany” was not long in coming: If drones were capable of inspections, why not reviews? Working with a drone manufacturing company, the department designed a prototype, unmanned flying vehicle that includes a spray nozzle and is connected to a ground-based paint supply. From there, its operator can direct it anywhere within range of the supply hose to cover vandalism on high walls, bridges and overpasses. The pilot project is already in a trial phase with positive results, particularly in terms of safety and man-hours of the cleaning crews, as well as the associated resources of the municipality. And if successful, it could be a good practice to be emulated by other big cities,
