Roads made out of smart materials that can measure and monitor their own performance over time are not from a science fiction. Several countries around the globe, especially in the Europe and North America are in a healthy race to build such smart roads. The UK wants to give a jumpstart to the country in the digital transformation of roads and has launched an ambitious research project with the aim.
The project named ‘Digital Roads’, which envisions to reduce the cost and time and improve quality, safety sustainability and resilience performance of expressways. It is being supported with funds by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and is undertaken by the University of Cambridge. Dr. Ioannis Brilakirs, Laing O’Rourke Reader in Construction Engineering will lead the project. Co investigators Dr Furmiya Iida, Prof. Abir Al-Tabibaa and Prof. Mark Girolam will join him. The Cambridge engineers will work in partnership with Highways England and construction and engineering company Costain.
How Smart Roads are built
The researchers will use graphene infused concrete coatings to enable self-sensing on both the road surface and the median barrier, informing the road’s Digital Twin through robotic monitoring. These self-sensing and self-healing materials, along with a wide range of measured data, will inform the data-science enabled digital processes, resulting in making better design, construction, maintenance, and operation predictions. This will make roads considerably less expensive, more reliable, and safer, allowing highways agencies and councils to identify when repair work is needed.
Dr Brilakis said: “Digital Roads’ is the beacon of our broader £15 million Digital Roads of the Future initiative, that also includes other similar programmes. Combined, these programmes will build a critical mass of over 50 researchers at Cambridge over the next five years, working collaboratively with Highways England, Costain and many other industry partners to rethink roads delivery and management, deliver impact directly to all partners involved, and set the foundations for a long-term Institute on the Future of Roads.”
Professor Girolami, Sir Kirby Laing Professor of Civil Engineering, Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair at the University of Cambridge, Academic Director for CSIC and Programme Director for Data-Centric Engineering at The Alan Turing Institute, said: “We can consider Digital Roads as providing one of the components of the cyber-physical fabric essential for more resilient and robust UK infrastructure.
Digital Roads is an excellent example of the need for multi-disciplinary teams adopting a data-centric engineering approach to address some of the grand challenges we face.”
Dr Iida, Reader in Robotics, said: “This project will see robotics and AI technologies applied to the high-impact application area of civil engineering, where a considerable growth margin is expected. Academic researchers will be better connected and able to collaborate with industrial partners to achieve real-life impact with their research.”
By 2030, the Digital Roads team aims to develop outcomes to a commercial stage and to follow the same development journey for other road assets such as bridges and tunnels, followed by the entire strategic road network by 2040. This will ensure that roads become safer, serviceable at a lower cost, and maintained more efficiently and sustainably, reducing the emissions generated by roadworks, and preventing unnecessary delays to motorists.
(Courtesy: University of Cambridge, Department of Engineering, news releases)