Colorado Prepares To Install 'Smart Road' Product By Integrated Roadways

Wave723 shares a report from IEEE Spectrum: On August 30, a startup plans to add its "smart pavement" to an intersection in an industrial corner of Denver, Colorado. The company has encased assorted electronics within four slabs of concrete and will wedge those slabs into the road between a Pepsi Co. bottling plant and two parking lots. Integrated Roadways says its product, which can deduce the speed, weight, and direction of a vehicle from the basket of sensors buried in the pavement, will face its first real-world test at that discreet Denver junction. If this trial goes well, the startup "will replace 500 meters of pavement along a dangerous curve in Highway 285, just south of Denver, with its product in early 2019," reports IEEE Spectrum. The sensors will be able to detect when a driver careens off the road's edge and alert authorities. It even has the ability to prompt officials to reconfigure lanes to relieve congestion.

Re: too much smart not enough common sense

[javaman235]

Given tearing up the road must come with high price, what's wrong with cameras with object tracking or the old tubes they throw across the road today to track speed?

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[Riceballsan]

Didn't solar roadway take like 3 million dollars between indie gogo and DoT grants, and all they have to show for it is a small patch of sidewalk with LED lights you can't see during the day, has already caught fire once, and currently is producing under 5 cents worth of power a day in the peak of summer. That's of course before asking what kind of solar pannel surface is supposed to remain good at absorbing light with rocks and sand grinded into them under litteral tons of weight. Solar is great... but a

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[Daralantan]

Don't forget the solar sidewalk is also unable to melt snow (advertised feature) and is already having the LEDs die and panels break. Yet some people are still on fire for them as the best "freaking" idea ever.

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[AmiMoJo]

The basic concept of solar road surfaces has been proven. There was a trial with a bike path that produces decent amounts of energy, around 70kWh/m2/year in northern Europe.

Some idiots criticised the cost of the prototype, or pointed out that solar PV on roofs nearby would generate about twice that much. Can you imagine the politics of the local government wanting to use private individual's roofs to generate electricity, or creating shade by erecting panels all over the place? The whole point is that the r

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[Riceballsan]

The point in comparing them to roof designs isn't in saying that you should put them on private roofs, the point is you can put them anywhere that allows you the benefits of being on a roof. There's more or less 3 ways you can set up a solar panel. The most efficient is tracking, where the panel is smart and tilts itself to face the sun. Next best is to angle it and face the most common directions the sun will face, and of course the worse idea is to just leave it flat on the ground. The china roadway has

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[AmiMoJo]

How did people steal solar panels that were buried under a transparent concrete road surface on a busy highway? And what would they do with them, it's not like they are the kind of panel you could just throw on a roof?

The point is that in most countries the local government can't just build stuff wherever it suits them. There are all sorts of considerations, practical and aesthetic and legal. So once they put solar on the roof of their offices etc. and the price comes down with development and mass producti

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[Riceballsan]

hell if I know, but apparently there are conflicting stories, some say it is theft http://www.latimes.com/world/a... [latimes.com]

yet others say it probably was just damaged by normal physics... AKA solar panels and heavy things don't mix so well. https://www.scmp.com/news/chin... [scmp.com]

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[AmiMoJo]

The LA Times is geoblocked but from the other link I agree it does tend to look like normal road damage. China doesn't have the kind of strict requirements for vehicles that we have in the West, so you see some pretty dodgy looking trucks with precarious loads. People are careful not to follow too closely behind them.

So yeah, normal for China.

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[Riceballsan]

right but the general point that's for just a few days. American automotive standards aren't magically going to make tanker trucks with rocks, dirt, sand etc... stuck in the tires, and solar panels a good mix. Trying to combine the 2 in the same way is like trying to combine pizza delivery and plumbing into the same business. They may have occasional need to go to your house in common, but that is where the similarities end and the contradictions become quite apparant.

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[ezelkow1]

ummm, not really. I live in Denver, we dont really get all that much snow, at least nothing that sticks around and is annoying. The east coast and midwest (like chicago area) are much much worse. We may get a couple ~6in snow storms each winter but due to the elevation and fairly consistent sunlight its usually mostly melted away within a couple of days. Last winter we only really had one such storm that I can remember, and usually its like an inch or two thats gone by noon the next day.

The actual mountain

Taxation..

[thesupraman]

The 'benefit' to this is almost certainly that it will ALSO be collecting identifying information about the vehicles and occupants.

A lot of local and state governments are rushing to put technology around roads that allows personal tracking, by monitoring wifi, bluetooth and other similar emissions, and of course once they have enough of this, automated tolling, congestion charges, speeding and other driving fines, etc become SO much easier to levy 'for the good of everyone' (which generally means so the st

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[fluffernutter]

When you are in public, yes, people see you. But they don't normally TRACK you. People don't generally like having neighbors that peek through the blinds and keep lists of comings and goings.

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[Gherald]

"Amy Ford, director of communications for the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), says that section of highway cannot easily be widened and is too narrow to support the addition of a guardrail. When accidents do occur there, it’s crucial to alert emergency responders as quickly as possible."

Re:Wouldn't it be better

[alzoron]

In the article the careening thing is mentioned in regards to Colorado's mountainous highways. So yeah, they are high. The roads are very high and very difficult to make careen-off proof.

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[SuperKendall]

Banking sounds awesome right up until you have to plow snow....

Instead of banking try on this new concept for size - "Drive at a reasonable speed for conditions and road".

What Colorado DOES put in are guardrails, which provide harsh but fair feedback when you have exceeded the margins, and are just low enough that if you really exceed them you are properly disposed of.

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[gravewax]

yet they have no problems spending millions on electronics to tell them this? wouldn't fixed cameras combined with better guard rails be a far better and cheaper investment and provide the same information to authorities? Add some speed cameras to it and they may even pay for themselves.

Seems useful...

[SuperKendall]

I have to agree I see some value in some sections of roads where more accidents occur being able to alert authorities there's a problem - that could save response time.

I wonder how much quicker it would really be, since mostly people would dial 911 right away - but it would probably shorten the time it took to know exactly where an accident was.

I've driven on the part of 285 mentioned pretty often, what would really be better is if they widened lanes a bit more at each curve. That section has kind

True innovation

[manu0601]

If you want to make a true road innovation, do it without concrete. We are running out of sand to make the material (desert sand is unusable unfortunately), and it does not ages very well beyond 50 years.

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[Sperbels]

Keep in mind: All of our modern problems can be solved or significantly mitigated by mandatory population reduction...including this one.

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[manu0601]

A reduced population will still have to deal with concrete old bridges that collapse.

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[hawk]

That problem curve is apparently already implementing this solution . . . :)

hawk

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[fedos]

TIL making roads safer by reducing speeds is evil.

Dangerous curve

[PPH]

I can just imagine them getting some strange data [youtube.com].

LOL, mail in ticket

[p51d007]

They are touting this as "for safety" I'll bet. But, once they work out the bugs, look for mandated NFC, bluetooth or some other ID device on EVERY vehicle. If it can detect the vehicle speed, just think of the unlimited revenue stream for speeding vehicles. Or, detecting if a vehicle license plate/registration/driver license is expired. Oh just think of the possibilities. Sniffers to detect pollution, someone talking on the phone, eating a hamburger, all sorts of thinks government could use to bilk consu

Old tech

[gordguide]

A local firm, International Road Dynamics, has been manufacturing and selling a product that does exactly the same things as this product does, for 35 years.

https://www.irdinc.com/ [irdinc.com]

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[The-Ixian]

But see... this one will be smart and have apps and disrupt the paradigm....

Will they use this to dectect people speeding?

[Green Mountain Bot]

How will they use the data when they find that 95% of traffic on a given road segment exceeds the speed limit? Will they use it for revenue enhancement? Or will they use it to implement the 85% rule [mikeontraffic.com]?