8 mo. ago • 96%

UK starts early trials of World's first pothole preventing robot

Driverless vehicle that uses sensors to measure road surface quality and repair small cracks to stop them turning into potholes and hopefully decreasing the cost of road maintenance while improving average surface quality.

United Kingdom @feddit.uk UK starts early trials of World's first pothole preventing robot

33 comments

You mean trains, bikes, and good public transit? Because those all mean less wear and tear on the roads overall. Trust an American because we've been at this for seventy years. If you guys go all in on car dependency, it's not only going to break the banks of government from local to national, but it's going to break your bank and destroy what small businesses you have left.

53
- Good public transit does not mean less wear and tear on the roads, absolutely not. As I stated in a different comment, a bus that replaces 10-20 cars causes similar road damage as 10000 cars. Which is fine, but for completely different reasons. Public transport is good because it allows more pedestrian-friendly cities, reduces pollution, etc; just road wear and tear is not one of the reasons why it's good, it's one of the drawbacks.
  
  24
  
  Well, at least trams and trains don't produce wear on roads, and a good freight train network reduces the need for heavy trucks.
  
  9
  
  Good point, thanks for holding me accountable to the truth. We can't set things right if we're selling people a bill of goods; that's what got us here in the first place.
  
  1
- This guy acting like US invented cars and have divine knowledge from this experience.
  
  Dude, Europe got 10x better public transport and are far less car dependent than the US.
  
  Our cities are too old to be build with cars in mind.
  
  8
  
  I think they're saying "America is a bad example, please don't follow us"
  
  15
  
  Our cities are too old to be build with cars in mind.
  
  Vast parts of the cities I lived in were completely bulldozed to accommodate cars.
  
  10
  
  And yet you guys are attempting to follow in our footsteps with new construction. Also the US was also too old to be built with cars in mind, we bulldozed our cities for the car (ಥ_ʖಥ)
  
  5
- Only 70 years...?
  
  1
The problem with potholes and road damage in the UK isn't to do with not knowing where potholes are, it's to do with councils having their central government funding taken away (cough 14 years of Tory rule cough)

Local government funding has been cut to the bone, and roads, paths, community centres, libraries, council housing, homeless shelters, etc have all been paying the price.

Assuming it works, this is still a cool project though.

44
- Totally agree! This kind of technology will pay divends I'm sure in the long term as it matures, but as with all technological development it's not likely to be a scalable, cost effective solution. For now, a government that understands the importance of infrastructure maintenance would do wonders.
  
  4
That's pretty neat, every city needs constant road work

23
- Ban cars
  
  -12
  
  Did you know that road damage is proportional to the fourth power of weight? A single city bus does similar road damage to 10000 cars. Since we're talking about road damage here, shall we ban buses too? Do I need to tell my 78 year mom with limited mobility to suck it up and cycle?
  
  I work in a related field and having fewer cars on the road is a priority of mine, but I swear the "fuck cars" crew are completely deluded from reality.
  
  17
  
  I choose to believe that you are the real spez, and that's why you're such a fuckwit.
  
  14
Self-driving? Better round up a mob and torch it.

They'd better not be training that AI on any potholes I helped create!

11
I was just thinking about something like this for fixing road cracks, it could work like a 3D printer with a scanner on the front to follow the crack.

As usual, my great ideas are about half a decade too late.

10
28 Days Later...

2
Or just pay humans a living wage to do it today, no trial required.

2
- tarmacking is a horrible job especially at night, personally I'd rather reduce the cost of infrastructure maintenance using automation and then pay people a living wage to do nicer jobs.
  
  43
  
  Bets on this actually reducing the cost of maintenance? I’d hazard a guess that it will cost more, fix less, and result in fewer local jobs. But the VC-backed overseas startup CEO will profit, so that’s something I suppose.
  
  10
- Looking at the decline around me, I doubt my local council has any money to employ said people. Our roads are full of potholes. Had a blowout on one not so long ago.
  
  If the government can't get more money coming in to councils, this will have to do.
  
  6
  
  They said there is a skills shortage in the video. They can not find people to take the jobs.
  
  2
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2

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