The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) is working to install smart pavement technology in the highway to notify first responders whenever a car has run off the road.
The high-tech surface is installed in premade, modular slabs that contain a mesh network of fiber-optic sensing cables that allow the roadway to “feel” a car. The road also can be connected to expansion modules like satellites, sensors or data storage, according to Tim Sylvester, CEO of Integrated Roadways, CDOT's partner in the venture. There are 2,000 expansion ports per mile for every lane.
The $2.75 million contract for the five-year demonstration project was awarded in March. The chosen deployment site is a curvy section of U.S. 285 at the end of a lengthy straightaway that features the first of many switchbacks heading into a more mountainous terrain. Inattentive motorists may drive off the road here, but given its rural setting there might not always be someone around to report the accident.
The sensors in the pavement pass data to servers that run the algorithms that determine if the movement picked up by the road is indicative of a runoff. The Integrated Roadways system updates alerts in an Amazon Web Services cloud, which CDOT officials can access through a dashboard.
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Source: Government Computer News
