Plenty of people are excited about laying down new high-tech infrastructure to create smart cities. But can cutting-edge technology also be used to keep tabs on existing infrastructure, such as bridges? Intel certainly believes so — and it recently signed a deal with the Minnesota Department of Transportation and Kentucky Transportation Cabinet to prove it. The collaboration will see Intel’s cutting-edge drone technology used to carry out inspections of bridges in the regions.

Since even minor issues such as lane closures on these bridges result in major, costly delays, the hope is that drones will be useful in spotting potential problems before they become serious.

“What people may not know is that majority of U.S. bridges are more than 50 years old, and 10 percent of them are rated structurally deficient or obsolete,” Anil Nanduri, vice president and general manager of the Intel drone team, told Digital Trends. “The process of bridge inspections is a highly manual process and can be dangerous. What we did with the drone technology is supplement that process to save cost, time, and improve accuracy and reliable data.”

From Digital Trends>>