For next-generation smart cities, small UAVs (also known as drones) are vital to incorporate in airspace for advancing the transportation systems. This paper presents a review of recent developments in relation to the application of UAVs in three major domains of transportation, namely; road safety, traffic monitoring and highway infrastructure management. Advances in computer vision algorithms to extract key features from UAV acquired videos and images are discussed along with the discussion on improvements made in traffic flow analysis methods, risk assessment and assistance in accident investigation and damage assessments for bridges and pavements. Additionally, barriers associated with the wide-scale deployment of UAVs technology are identified and countermeasures to overcome these barriers are discussed, along with their implications.

对于下一代智能城市而言，小型无人机（也称为无人机）对于将其纳入空域以推进运输系统至关重要。本文介绍了与无人机在运输的三个主要领域中的应用有关的最新进展。道路安全，交通监控和高速公路基础设施管理。讨论了从无人机获取的视频和图像中提取关键特征的计算机视觉算法的进展，以及有关交通流分析方法，风险评估以及事故调查和桥梁和人行道损坏评估的协助方面的改进的讨论。此外，确定了与无人机技术大规模部署相关的障碍，并讨论了克服这些障碍的对策及其含义。