Caltrans – 2024 Aerial Achievement Award Winner – Achievements in Innovation

Caltrans has been a robust drone leader within the transportation industry and is continuously innovating to incorporate drone technologies to solve diverse and complex problems.

The list of Caltrans accomplishments is lengthy — from utilizing a drone to live stream real-time conditions of a landslide back to an engineer’s office 450 miles away, to bridge inspections and construction monitoring. One success that stands out is a project within the USDOT Smart Program. Caltrans prototyped, tested, and successfully deployed a completely off-grid X2 Dock system at a site near The California/Mexico Border. This site, to our knowledge, was the first of its kind to rely 100% on solar power, and Starlink for connectivity. This type of innovation sets the stage for off-grid applications across the state of California, allowing for semi-portable, scaled, dock based UAS operations for numerous applications, including construction, bridge inspection, environmental, geotechnical monitoring, and traffic operations missions.