Smart roads are road infrastructures with integrated structural materials, sensors, information centres, and energy systems. They are intended to extend the road's service life and performance, reduce safety risks, and improve service quality. Several smart road pilot projects have been initiated, such as precast pavements with integrated optical fibres, self-healing asphalt material, self-snow-melting systems and solar pavements. Smart roads are likely to play an important role in future sustainable transport systems and supplying data for intelligent transportation systems (ITS). This book brings together the latest research into technologies for novel and smart road infrastructures. Coverage includes road surface technologies, techniques for road-based energy harvesting, sustainable pavement approaches, informatization of the road, and use of the data gained for various cloud-based services including ITS. A systematic guide to an emerging topic, this book is aimed particularly at researchers in academia and industry, including those working for ITS providers and organizations. It will also be of use to practitioners in ITS organizations and governmental transport agencies.
Inspec keywords: road traffic; road vehicles; smart power grids; roads; road safety
Other keywords: road traffic; smart power grids; road safety; roads; road vehicles
Subjects: Power systems; Traffic engineering computing; General and management topics; Road-traffic system control; General electrical engineering topics
At present, intelligent transportation system mainly relies on roadside sensors to perceive traffic information rather than the status of road. However, with the development of automatic driving technology, future vehicles will have higher demand for the road integrity, driving comfort and road skid resistance, etc. Therefore, embedding sensors into road to monitor and evaluate road state has become an indispensable part of future intelligent transportation system.
The improvement of infrastructure is the key to ensure the operation of vehicles. With the progress of autonomous vehicles (AVs) technology and equipment, efficient and safe vehicle driving has become the result of a series of communication and intelligent technologies, and traditional road infrastructure cannot meet all the needs of vehicle travel. Autonomous driving pavement (ADP) is an important part of intelligent infrastructure in the synergy between vehicle and road. It aims to make the pavement bear the load on the basis of using new materials or new pavement structure and function design method. Smart devices embedded in the pavement can make the automatic and semiautomatic driving cars locate, and testing infrastructure marks the existence of rich camera and laser radar system to capture information, auxiliary driving decision-making, and improve the driving experience. The visual-based vehicle lateral control and navigation system is a lane detection and tracking method using a camera to detect lane marks on the road. The main methods include permanent magnet navigation, and embedded radiofrequency (RF) tag navigation.
Prefabricated pavement technology refers to a kind of technology that completes the prefabrication of pavement structure layer in the factory and then delivers it to the construction site for assembly, joint treatment, and other follow-up processes so as to complete the rapid construction of pavement structure. The precast pavement technology overcomes the shortcomings of extensive production, low efficiency, and difficult control of construction quality caused by the traditional pavement pouring and paving and realizes the standardized construction and fine management of pavement structure. In addition, the prefabricated pavement technology for the construction of digital infrastructure makes the intelligent sensing equipment placed in the road accurately put in, and the survival rate of the sensing equipment is greatly improved.
In this paper, The digitization rate of basic elements such as long-term transportation infrastructure, transportation equipment, operators, and employees will reach 100%, and breakthroughs will be made in the exchange of information on various transportation methods. In February 2018, the General Office of the Ministry of Transport issued the "Notice on Accelerating the Promotion of a New Generation of National Traffic Control Network and Smart Road Pilots," to accelerate the promotion of a new generation of national traffic control network and smart highway pilot projects. The team is committed to the innovation and industrialization of Internet of Things technology in vertical industries. Real-time positioning system (RTLS) is the advanced technology of intelligent transportation system. It uses sensor detection technology to obtain vehicle and road information, realizes dynamic real-time information interaction between vehicle and road through advanced wireless communication and new generation Internet technology, and carries out vehicle active safety control and road collaborative management on the basis of full-time and space dynamic traffic information collection and integration so as to fully realize the integration and effective coordination of human, vehicle, and road, and ensure traffic safety, improve traffic efficiency, and form a safe and efficient traffic flow environment-friendly road traffic system. In the vehicle-road cooperative system, the accurate positioning of vehicle is the core problem to realize the vehicle cooperative control
With the continuous development of Internet, Internet of Things, sensor technology, artificial intelligence, and other science and technology, the concept of smart city, intelligent transportation, smart campus, intelligent logistics, and other concepts is constantly proposed. The requirements point out that the key point is to improve the level of information technology and to strengthen the integration and application ability of cloud computing, Internet of Things, intelligence, mobile communication, building information modeling (BIM), big data, and other information technology, and the emphasis should be placed on the scientific development road from traditional development mode to green construction, intelligent management, and information management. In order to show the construction progress of Ulanqab stretch of Su Hua highway more vividly, centralize display, and record the real-time monitoring data of the information system, the "Smart Site" system applied in the Su Hua highway project displays all the monitoring content through a dynamic map, which contains all kinds of statistical information about the project planning route and several important construction sites of the Su Hua highway.
China's road construction is still facing many problems. First, safety accidents are still prominent, and blocking events such as regional congestion and bad weather are frequent. Second, some areas have already faced the constraints of land and environmental protection, and the space for new construction is very limited. It is estimated that by 2035 passenger and freight transport demand will still maintain an annual growth rate of 2%-3%, and the growth rate of eastern regions will be higher, but the rapid development of passenger cars may exceed this growth rate. Limited by rigid constraints such as land supply and environmental protection requirements, it is impossible to continue to adopt the development mode of large-scale highway construction in eastern China. Third, to a certain extent, it cannot fully adapt to the development trend of digitization and informatization, for example, the emergency information acquisition is not timely, the rescue support ability is prominent, the operation state perception means are single, the dependence on roadside facilities is strong, the interaction means between managers and travellers is insufficient, the experience of collaborative service between vehicles and roads is insufficient, and it cannot fully meet the requirements of automatic driving and fleet driving. The new business form, new mode, toll collection, communication, and monitoring system developed in the 1990s are not suitable for modern service and demand.
A great deal of old cement concrete (hereinafter referred to as "cement") highways need to be transformed into asphalt concrete (herein after referred to as "asphalt") ones world wide every year. The process involved is often called "White to Black" or "Black on White" transformations. If the cement pavement is directly covered with asphalt, it is prone to reflection cracks at the joints due to the expansion and contraction of the cement slab and its deformation under the action of vehicle load. In addition, the asphalt layer is flexible compared with the cement slab due to high rigidity of the cement slab, which makes the asphalt layer absorb a large amount of vehicle impact energy and results in various types of fatigue damage, such as rutting, delamination, and cracking. Direct asphalt overlaying is likely to cause the following highway troubles.