Contrary to what car makers try and make you believe, there is much ongoing in smartening the road infrastructure that is to host the intelligent vehicles that are being developed and manufactured. One does get the impression, however, that the two developments – the smart car and smart roads – are two separate, parallel worlds, not necessarily talking to each other.

Interaction between the road and the vehicles is a condition sine qua non for the optimisation of the overall road system. “

Smart roads research in Europe, driven by sustainability and cost-reduction motives, is looking into interactive street lighting, dynamic lines adjusted to the traffic situation, self-diagnosing and self-repairing pavement and extracting energy from the road surface, just to mention a few interesting innovations,. It is clear that these types of applications can only function when a high-quality set of data is collected and processed, both from the infrastructure and its near surroundings as well as from the vehicles that drive on it. Interaction between the road and the vehicles is a condition sine qua non.

 

Media attention is moderate but picking up on it, thanks not least to the efforts of a joint research project by the Dutch construction firm Heijmans and design guru Daan Roosegaarde, who have managed to reach the wider public with appealing artist’s impressions and a passionate designer able to convey his enthusiasm on screen. But it is rather an exception than rule that this type of research attracts coverage beyond the usual technical journals.

 

Picture: (c) Studio Roosegaarde & Heijmans

 

Another example is the Forum of European National Highway Research Laboratories (FEHRL)-championed research on the Forever Open Road, a project aiming to define the fifth generation of roads. Besides road adaptability and climate resilience, road automation is one of the research pillars for which a research roadmap through 2030 has been developed. This effort, however, seems to be much less well-known to the general public, despite the involvement of Europe’s largest and most illustrious transport research institutes.

 

This is an extract of an article first published in in THX, the multi-media platform of the publishers of Thinking Highways, 2015 issue 2 April: Smart roads and vehicles: a non-exclusive deal.