The curse of potholes may soon be a thing of the past if a groundbreaking UK-led project to build robots capable of mending damaging road surfaces comes to fruition.
Tech start-up Robotiz3d, based at Daresbury Laboratory in Warrington, Cheshire, is combining artificial intelligence (AI) with advanced robotics to tackle the pothole problem.
Nealy two million potholes are fixed on UK roads annually – but with ageing infrastructure, increasing road users and extreme weather conditions, the situatio is only expected to worsen.
Conventional and manual methods for fixing potholes are both labour intensive and struggle to cope with this hazardous and costly problem.
The company has developed an autonomous vehicle which will locate and fix cracks and potholes in the road.
Using advanced detection and repair technologies incorporated into the AI robotics system, it can assess and predict the severity of defects, sealing them before they worsen.
Lisa Layzell, CEO and co-founder at Robotiz3d, said: “This is the first autonomous technology of this kind developed specifically to tackle the pothole crisis which plagues many parts of the country, and which is estimated to have cost more than £1 billion to repair over the last decade.
“For Robotiz3d, locating to STFC’s Daresbury Laboratory has provided us with a technologically sophisticated environment to operate in.
“The expertise available, both in technology and business development, have been invaluable as we move towards the commercialisation phase of our business.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has pledged to invest £8billion in fixing the holes in Britain’s roads, using money saved from the curtailed HS2 project.
The Automobile Association (AA) attended more than 52,000 pothole related breakdowns in April 2023, a 29 percent increase compared to the same period last year.
Additionally, the first four months of 2023 saw pothole breakdowns rise by a quarter (23 percent) compared to last year.
If the level of pothole breakdowns continues at current rates across the remainder of the year, 2023 is set to be the second worst year for road conditions behind 2018.
Jack Cousens, head of roads policy for the AA, said: “The pothole pandemic looks set to remain for quite some time, with little hope of a cure on the horizon.
“In order to help government and councils understand the true state of our roads we need the public to report every pothole they see.”
He continued: “Regardless of their size, depth, the type of road and its position in the lane, we need to make 2023 ‘The Year of the Pothole’ so we can get our roads repaired.
“Potholes come in all shapes and sizes, each one posing a different type of danger. While the worst are like deep caves, shallower splits that snake across the surface can catch the wheels of cyclists causing severe damage.
“On safety grounds alone, we need to do all we can to shine a light on the awful condition of UK roads.”
