The word smart seems to be applied to everything these days and we all know by now what a smartphone is but how about smart pavement?

What images are conjured up in your mind when you hear those words together? What emotions do you feel? Excitement, confusion, fear or boredom? Let’s face it, thinking about roads is kind of boring, isn’t it? Or is it?

If you’re like most people, you probably have a vague idea what smart pavement is, but are unsure of the specifics. Join the club. But I bet you’ve heard about Google developing driverless cars and Tesla’s fancy autopilot feature in the Model S. Those are sexy things to think about, but what about roads? Roads are entirely unsexy to contemplate. But someone has to think about them. They are one of the most taken for granted modern conveniences that everyone uses on a daily basis. Let’s face it, we’d perish in a month without roads because our food is generally somewhere else just beyond the horizon inside some truck, instead of in our backyards.

In the future, what will cars and roads be like?

Will we still have traffic jams like we do today? Will drunk drivers still be running into trees? Will there be steering wheels? Will Uber become an autonomous fleet? No one knows for absolute sure, but let’s start with a few basics that are most likely to impact roadways: Wi-Fi ubiquity, driverless cars, electric cars, Internet of Things (IoT), and sensors in the road providing real-time information about hazards to drivers/cars.

Let’s begin with thinking about driverless cars since there’s a lot of hype currently going on. Whether you are for or against driverless cars isn’t the issue, because they are coming, whether you like it or not. Automation is marching onward and shows no signs of slowing down. So, the reality is that driverless cars will be entering our roadways and fairly soon, too.

The automakers are currently in an arms race to make their own driverless cars but how will all these cars be interacting and communicating with each other on the road?

Tesla’s autopilot system is different from Google’s. Then what happens when Ford and Toyota come out with their own driverless cars which use their own proprietary technology? How will they communicate with Tesla’s and Google’s cars? Won’t we need some kind of intelligent infrastructure embedded in the roads that will be able to integrate these different systems together? A system designed to make sense of all the driverless cars would probably be a good concept to create now before the driverless cars arrive on our roads. This is where smart pavement comes in.

Smart roads aren’t actually a new idea, though.

In the 90’s the USDOT spent $70 million on smart road concepts to support autonomous vehicles. Additionally, Volvo has completed a research project which put magnets into the roads in an attempt to overcome the limitations of positioning driverless cars with only cameras and sensors. And we can’t forget Elon Musk of Tesla Motors complaining about poor lane markings on California roads, “We really need better lane markings in California. This is crazy.” Musk admits that roads are one of the main issues preventing Tesla’s autopilot technology from advancing forward. The end goal of Tesla’s autopilot is to reach total 100% automation. That state cannot be reached realistically within the current US highway system and the hugely variable road types.

There’s a lot more to smart pavement which will be discussed in Part 2 and 3, but autonomous vehicle integration is a very important part of understanding what smart pavement is and why it’s necessary to build today.

Now that we realize smart pavement will be instrumental for the successful integration of driverless cars, you would think many people would be working on developing it.

Not exactly.

Remember how I mentioned that roads were unsexy to think about? Hardly anyone is innovating in this space. There is one company that stands out, though. Integrated Roadways, led by a rather usual Missouri engineer named Tim Sylvester is about to make roads sexy again. Kansas City Mayor Sly James recently announced that Integrated Roadways is among seven winners of his 2016 Innovation Partnership Program. Tim Sylvester is a future-oriented engineer located in Kansas City who has been thinking about roads for a very long time. His story is fascinating mainly because while everyone else was ignoring the idea of roads, he was building his dreams and visions of smart roads into a reality.

Make sure and read Part 2 especially if you're interested in the Internet of Things (IoT). I’ll be covering the relationship between smart pavement and IoT in the next post.

Image Source for all: Pixabay

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