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Integrated Roadways, a startup, sees the future of infrastructure in precast concrete roadway panels that incorporate digital tech and fibre optics. The panels will be used to support wireless charging for electric vehicles and fast wireless data communications for autonomous vehicles, among other capabilities-including their use as resilient surfaces for vehicles to travel over.
The company has already installed Smart Pavement panels at one intersection in Denver and is working to deploy panels at five key intersections in Lenexa, Kansas, in coming months. The concrete panels are designed to last four times longer than traditional asphalt.
These panels can incorporate sensors and networking gear to support connected and autonomous EVs but also to support networks for municipal use in traffic control and other functions. They are designed to be software-upgradeable panels, similar to how modern vehicles and smartphones can be upgraded over-the-air. They can vary in size depending on the width of traffic lanes, but the panels in Denver are 14 x 10 feet and include traffic sensors and an expansion port with the ability to add in antennas and Gigabit Ethernet.
Founder and President Tim Sylvester sees the Smart Pavement concept in big-picture terms, and his timing might be perfect with the recent passage of the $1.2 trillion U.S. infrastructure improvement package. Sylvester was educated as an electrical engineer with a decade of experience in building roads.
While he welcomed the passage of the infrastructure bill, the U.S. is so far behind in improving its roadways that he estimates there is a $8 trillion backlog. Cities and states that maintain roadways don’t see any return on their investment in improving roadways, so there’s little incentive to do the work, which gives Integrated Roadways an advantage.
“We think of ourselves more like a network provider, setting up largescale programs and organizing all the financing,” he said in an interview with Fierce Electronics. Integrated Roadways plans to set up public-private partnerships with cities to expand its operation, a process he admits is complex and time-consuming, but also vitally needed.
“The [road construction] industry is obsessed, thinking we’ve always done it this way with the public paying for roadways,” he said. “It’s a broken system. There’s got to be a better way. We need the courage to reinvest in ourselves.”
Instead, he wants to take cities “out of their shackles of the traditional procurement system. Yes, it’s a new approach.”
As a network provider, Integrated Roadways could collect anonymous data on vehicles that would be useful to city traffic engineers and generate revenues. There would also be the possibility of supporting other network providers at a fee or also setting up software to collect fees from individual car owners that use Smart Pavement as a charging mechanism.
“We generate income from value-added services,” Sylvester said. Integrated Roadways, based in Kansas City, Missouri, has grown recently to 25 workers.
“By generating revenue from the commercial services that an open access digital infrastructure platform can provide, roads can begin to pay for their own existence, ensuring that not only can American infrastructure be upgraded for the next generations, but ensuring that our infrastructure is sustainably financed so that the needs of the American public are no longer dependent on political good will,” Sylvester said.
EV charging via roads works similar to wireless charging of a smartphone. There are already wireless charging stations for buses in some cities, including Moscow and Dubai. Generally, the electromagnetic field created by wires embedded in pavement generates enough power for collection by a passing vehicle that has special equipment.
RELATED: Dubai tests wireless charging for city buses and EVs
Detroit will receive the first U.S. public wireless EV-charging road system, according to reports. The Michigan Department of Transportation has awarded a contract to develop and construct a 1-mile stretch of wireless in-road charging near downtown. Israel-based Electreon is the developer.
Integrated Roadways has posted two short videos, one of its Smart Pavement installation in Denver and the other of how Smart Pavement is produced.
By Matt Hamblen
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