Street Smart: Embedded sensors turn roads into digital networks

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What if our roads were smarter? What if we could turn our roads into a digital network -- connecting drivers to the internet and providing connectivity between smart cars and tomorrow's smart cities? CGTN's Hendrick Sybrandy has the story.

On Brighton Boulevard in Denver, it looks like ordinary road work.

"This morning we're installing the first four smart pavement slabs."

But this repaving operation and this concrete are a bit unusual.

TIM SYLVESTER PRESIDENT, INTEGRATED ROADWAYS "Smart pavement has inside a fiber optic sensing cable that makes the road touch sensitive."

Tim Sylvester is the founder of Integrated Roadways, a Missouri company whose mission is this:

"Today we have smart phones, smart appliances, smart cars and even smart cities. But our roads are still just roads. But what if our roads of tomorrow could become a digital network."

Providing information to drivers, Sylvester says, and gather information about roads and highways, using the latest technologies.

TIM SYLVESTER PRESIDENT, INTEGRATED ROADWAYS "Sensors, antennas, the sky's the limit, or the road's the limit."

A near-fatal traffic accident prompted the Colorado Department of Transportation, which is always looking for new innovations, to green light this test project, the very first, it says, in the world.

HENDRIK SYBRANDY DENVER "Four years ago, a car traveling on Colorado Highway 285 slid off the road and down a steep embankment. The driver was trapped inside the vehicle in below freezing temperatures, without food and water, for six days."

The driver survived, but smart pavement, transmitting real-time data, could prevent a repeat.

PETER KOZINSKI, DIR. OF COLORADO DEPT. TRANSPORTATION ROADX PROGRAM "This will be able to tell us how the wheels of a vehicle are moving around and notify emergency responders if it senses those vehicles leave the road in an unsafe way."

Besides the safety functions, Sylvester says at a time when road-building is more expensive than ever, traffic information from these slabs could eventually be sold to customers to offset construction costs, the way Google and Facebook sell data from Internet traffic.

TIM SYLVESTER PRESIDENT, INTEGRATED ROADWAYS "So by putting the data collection and telecom into the road, the road pays for itself and we no longer have to worry about how the road gets funded."

Roads also offer promise in other ways. Smart pavement could eventually help autonomous cars better navigate. China is testing highways, covered with solar panels, as a way to produce power.

PETER KOZINSKI, DIR. OF COLORADO DEPT. TRANSPORTATION ROADX PROGRAM "The idea of inductive charging, could you have coils within the pavement that could provide power to electric vehicles?"

The Colorado Department of Transportation says deploying this type of concrete on a widespread basis is probably unrealistic but:

PETER KOZINSKI, DIR. OF COLORADO DEPT. TRANSPORTATION ROADX PROGRAM "We think this could really be a good tool to have in our toolbox."

This 200-hundred-thousand-dollar installation could soon be replicated at the scene of that 2014 accident. Roads are taking on new dimensions these days as we merge onto the highway of the future. Hendrik Sybrandy, CGTN, Denver.