Robot van patches over potholes automatically

Once we have a working digital twin for the highways, we can potentially deploy van-sized autonomous repair vehicles, not dissimilar to the machines exploring Mars, to track down defects and put them right, hopefully without coning off too many lanes, or too many sets of temporary traffic lights!

Richard Anvo is developing the pothole repairing robot…

Richard - The project is about a mobile robotic platform to be able to fix roads automatically, fixing potholes or cracks. So we're looking at the scale of a van, holding all the equipment from the robotic side to do the repair automatically.

Chris - I suppose it must be similar to the sorts of problems that are being solved to explore Mars. We've got autonomous vehicles following instructions, but they're largely self-directed, going and doing things to a surface, drilling, taking samples and so on. There must be many commonalities there?

Richard - Yeah, here the vehicle looks similar, but in the first place you drive the vehicle to where you need to repair. So the digital twin system tells the robotic system, 'Go to this area. There are some defects to be repaired' and from there we do the work automatically. It can clean the surface, you'll be able to repair the cracks, fix the pothole and do the lane marking at the same time.

Chris - Is anyone doing this anywhere else in the world yet? Do you have any kind of lead to follow or are you pioneering this?

Richard - A lot of research is going on, but I think our system is unique because it comes with the digital twin at the same time. So it is not just the robotic system only.

Chris - If you can get this to work, what sort of a difference can this make?

Richard - It will make a huge difference because it will save a lot of money and time. This one will tell exactly what to fix and where to fix.

Chris - And how long, dare I ask - and don't say five to ten years because everyone says five to ten years - how long before we probably will see these things trundling down the road and repairing all the potholes. Tell me tomorrow!

Richard - I think we can say soon. We're talking about a couple of years.

Chris - It's coming but we're going to have to be patient.

Richard - Yes.