Smart phones, smart fridges, smart cities—everything is increasingly connected to everything else. The internet-of-things revolution has brought new, albeit sometimes frivolous, features to the most mundane of everyday objects. But, our road system might actually help us to “sync up”!!
Roads are expensive to maintain, and generally only allow above-ground transportation, but Kansas City tech startup Integrated Roadways is trying to change that. The company’s “smart pavement” vision promises to make roadways safer and generally give roads a little more 21st-century pizzazz, by imbuing the road itself with smart technology. The “smart pavement” technology would not only help increase roadway safety by detecting crashes and dispatching emergency responders automatically, but could also serve as the platform for Wi-Fi for cars, help guide autonomous vehicles, and provide other future mobility services.
Tim Sylvester, Founder, Chief Executive and President-Integrated Roadways said, “Smart pavement is a factory-produced pavement system that transforms the road into a sensor, data and connectivity network for next-generation vehicles.”
BUILDING OF SLABS:
The concept involves replacing common asphalt paving with sophisticated, and “upgradeable” factory-made concrete slabs with high-resolution fiber optic sensors and other technologies inside the pavement to detect vehicle position in real time, as well as roadway conditions. Unlike most road construction where crews build the roadway on site, the collection of precast, factory-built concrete slabs are shipped to the construction site and positioned into place, one by one. Because it IS factory built, the technologies can be built inside the slabs, which would not be feasible on site, Sylvester said. Precast concrete pavement has been in use for more then 80 years, primarily in eastern Europe and northern Asia, and about 20 years in the United States. California is one of the largest adopters, followed by Illinois, Utah, and New York he added. This method allows roads to be built faster, last longer and reduce maintenance and repairs.
SAFETY:
The slabs’ technology give common roadways the ability to detect vehicles, and know where they are in real time. This technology would detect crashes as they occur thus automatically notify emergency responders to those crashes. Peter Kozinski, Director of the RoadX Program-Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) said, “The pavement would be able to act like the tracking pad on your mouse, knowing the speed and direction that a vehicle travels across it is going. If a vehicle leaves the pavement at a trajectory and speed that suggests they left unsafely, the pavement would notify emergency responders that someone ran off the road.”
This way, dispatchers could send someone to the scene to see if anyone needed help, instead of waiting for a passerby to recognize that someone had gone off the road.
TEST ROAD GRANTED:
Smart pavement is about to be put to the test. The CDOT has awarded the company and their partners Kiewit Infrastructure Co., Cisco Systems, WSP Global, and Wichita Concrete Pipe, a five-year contract for a smart-pavement project on U.S. 285 near Fairplay, Colorado, south of Breckenridge. “We believe that Integrated Roadways has an interesting concept that we want to see how well it works. While it’s never been deployed before, and is still very conceptual, the state was interested in fostering the idea and seeing its value,” Kozinski said.
They will build about a one-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. “It is such a beautiful location that people get caught up in the view and they miss the turn. When someone goes off the edge of the road in a rural area, they may not be seen by anyone,” Sylvester said.
In addition, intelligent infrastructure 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.
FUTURE UPGRADING:
All technology must remain current, therefore upgraded. Integrated Roadways uses passive technologies inside the pavement that are operated by a fiber optic network that work with other technologies on the side of the road—that can be serviced and upgraded separately. Expansion ports in the pavement allow for sensors and other elements to be plugged in or removed when they are not working properly or have become obsolete. “The cable and wire that are in the road don’t wear out or become obsolete (similar to the plugs in homes that don’t become obsolete when the devices plugged into it change),” Sylvester said.
Eventually, Sylvester said he envisions the roads paying for themselves through revenue generated by selling access to data, connectivity and services.
WI-FI CONNECTION THROUGH SMART PAVEMENT:
Integrated Roadways also envisions the system to be the backbone of a much-anticipated “nationwide 5G network”—an ultra-fast wireless communication standard without the need of additional infrastructure—by sending data over an integrated fiber optic mesh.
- Future uses of smart pavement would be for connectivity purposes, including:
- Wi-Fi access
- Dedicated short-range communications for connected vehicles
- As a host for the next generation of high-speed cellular service
- Help cars become autonomous in a safer way “It’s not all about the equipment on the car working correctly. It becomes the question of the reliability of the data that’s being provided to the car from the road network. And once cars do become autonomous, smart pavement unleashes the possibilities of what you can do in the car instead of driving—working, gaming, or streaming movies,” Sylvester said.
- By knowing where vehicles are, and how fast they’re going, smart roadways could also collect real-time data on road conditions and congestion data, letting drivers — and self-driving cars in particular — choose the route that is the most efficient and safe.
INITIAL USE:
Initially though, the primary use of smart pavement will be the collection of real-time data about vehicles and traffic. The data won’t track where your car goes or how fast you’re driving, Sylvester said, but is able to determine the difference between a Buick Regal or Honda Civic on the road. Vehicles have fingerprints that come from the axle width and length, the weight of the vehicle, and its weight distribution.
INQUIRING, SKEPTICAL MINDS MUST WONDER WHY?:
- Why is all of this necessary? Conventional asphalt roads have sufficed for a while now. Autonomous vehicles have sophisticated path detection technologies built-in, so why would the road have to inform the car of potential dangers?
- How much information will our smart roads be collecting about us? Tim Sylvester, said that personal data will not be collected. “We aren’t going to say this is John Smith’s Lexus, but we can say that this is a Lexus.”
- Would we have to accept the terms and conditions before driving on the highway?
- And what about tolls?
- In the demo video—ISCP posted adjacent to this article: https://www.concretepavements.org/2018/08/28/video-integrated-roadways-how-intelligent-could-smart-roads-become/—Integrated Roadways mentions the fiber-optic roads will be self-funded by allowing third parties to use the data for value added services—think interactive billboards or location-based advertising.
- Who has access to the data?
- And where’s that data going? So far, it’s impossible to get real answers because smart roads aren’t a thing yet. But we might get some soon after data is collected while working with the Colorado DOT.
For the VIDEO adjacent to this ISCP article titled “VIDEO: Integrated Roadways—How Intelligent COULD “Smart Roads” Become?”, please go to: https://www.concretepavements.org/2018/08/28/video-integrated-roadways-how-intelligent-could-smart-roads-become/
For the World Economic Forum article titled “This is how intelligent smart roads could become”, please go to: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/05/smart-roads-could-soon-call-an-ambulance-connect-you-to-the-internet?es_p=6998676
For the Kansas City Star article titled “Wi-Fi in the road? Kansas City tech start-up is wiring pavement for safety — and fun” please go to: https://www.kansascity.com/news/business/article210853514.html#storylink=cpy