National Highways has announced the five winners of its competition to find new ways to remove graffiti from alongside roads, or prevent it from appearing in the first place.
The government-owned company said graffiti next to roads or on bridges can be distracting for drivers and that roads often have to be closed during clean-up works, with removal costing up to £10,000 in some cases.
National Highways, formerly Highways England, launched the competition with Kier and Connected Places Catapult in order to identify innovative solutions to these problems.
The five winning ideas were:
- Hausbots (pictured), which involves wall-climbing robotics that apply graffiti-preventative paints, reducing the need for workers to take to great heights
- Powerlase, which would use lasers to remove graffiti from surfaces while preventing additional damage to the finish of surface coatings and films
- Innovation Factory, which involves audio sensors to detect the application of graffiti, in order to alert authorities and trigger visual and audio deterrents
- Sensing Feeling, which would use AI software that analyses behaviour to detect people doing graffiti and then activate alarms and lights
- Nano Eco Group, a 3D chemical coating to prevent the adhesion of graffiti to a variety of surfaces and films.
The winning entries will each get up to £30,000 to develop their idea along with a feasibility strategy, which National Highways will use to determine which products to take forward for use on the road network.
Kier head of innovation Tom Tideswell said: ‘Tackling graffiti is an everyday labour-intensive occurrence for our maintenance teams and we are always on the look-out for innovative solutions to speed up the identification and reduce time on site removing graffiti.
‘The variety of applications chosen to be taken forward can potentially increase removal productivity, reduce exposure to our workforce and reduce the need for traffic management, which will improve journey reliability times for road users. I am looking forward to seeing how these potential solutions progress and enhance the variety of methods of prevention and removal of graffiti.’
The competition follows a recent trial of ideas for graffiti removal and prevention over two days at an off-road site at Gravelly Hill Interchange in Birmingham – more commonly known as Spaghetti Junction.
