The Deputy Ministry of Infrastructure of the Government of the Canary Islands, headed by Francisco González, has signed a contract with the company CATEC to develop the first prototype of an automatic road surface inspection device using artificial vision.
The initiative is part of an innovative procurement procedure through Association for Innovation, used very rarely in Spain, which allows public administrations to actively participate in R&D projects when there are no technological solutions on the market capable of responding to their needs.
The device will be installed on a vehicle that will travel at normal traffic speed and will use high-precision optical systems to capture detailed images of the pavement, which will be analyzed using artificial intelligence algorithms trained to detect and classify deteriorations on the road surface. This advance will allow obtaining precise, updated and systematic diagnoses of the state of the road network without interrupting the flow of traffic or depending on slow and costly visual inspections.
“With this project, we are committed to a new way of managing public infrastructures: more efficient, more technological and more sustainable. It is an example of how innovation can be put at the service of better planning and conservation of our roads,” said Francisco González.
The project, which will be coordinated by the Laboratory and Construction Quality Service, has an execution period of 24 months and a total budget of 298,637 euros. It is expected that within eight months the first visual results of the system will be available, capturing images of the road surface from a moving vehicle and automatically processing the defects detected at 100 km/h.
“This type of solution will allow us to anticipate the deterioration of the pavement and prioritize actions with objective technical criteria. This optimizes public resources and improves the safety and comfort of road network users,” added González.