Integrated Roadways, a Kansas City technology start-up, is developing “smart pavement” technology that would not only help increase roadway safety but also serve as the Wi-Fi platform for cars and other future mobility services.
The road system uses high-resolution fiber optic sensors and other technologies inside the pavement to detect vehicle position in real time as well as roadway conditions. This technology would detect crashes as they occur, for instance, and automatically notify emergency responders to those crashes.
Integrated Roadway’s smart pavement will soon be put to the test. The company announced this spring that the Colorado Department of Transportation has awarded a $2.75 million contract for a five-year smart pavement project on U.S. 285 near Fairplay, Colo. The company, along with its partners, will build about a half-mile of smart pavement on the highway to collect data on run-off-the-road crashes as well as automatically alert authorities to the crashes.
In addition, the intelligent infrastructure technology can help improve road safety by providing data from before and after a crash to highway officials so they can design changes to prevent similar crashes in the future.
Unlike most road construction work in which crews build the roadway on site, smart pavement is a collection of precast, factory-built concrete slabs that are shipped to the construction site on the back of trucks and then positioned into place, one by one.
----------
Source: Transport Topics
