National Highways is to trial three winning ideas from its roadworks innovation competition, which aims to use the latest technology to help ‘ease the pain of roadworks’.
Earlier this year, 10 finalists received up to £15,000 each to investigate the feasibility of their ideas and three of them have now been selected to be trialled in real-life situations on the strategic road network and will each receive up to £60,000 to take their ideas forward.
The three winners are:
- Cambridge-based Alchera Technologies, working with Costain, will use AI to improve roadwork planning by better understanding the impacts of different roadworks and road closures.
- Robok, also based in Cambridge and supported by Balfour Beatty, will use AI-powered computer vision technology to analyse CCTV footage offering a better understanding of both road user and roadworker behaviour.
- WordNerds, of Gateshead, supported by Kier and Costain, will provide new insights into people’s perception of roadworks using AI powered text-analytics which will help National Highways make evidence-based improvements on planned works.
National Highways said one of the goals of the competition was to allow smaller enterprises, which haven’t traditionally had the opportunity to work directly with it or with the supply chain, to showcase their ideas and win the chance to take them out on the road network.
Executive director for major projects Nicola Bell said: ‘Our goal in launching the competition was to find new ideas to help reduce the impact of roadworks on people and we are confident these exciting projects will be able to do just that.
‘We are putting them to the test on our network, which will be the real challenge, but we are excited to see how well they perform and the difference they can make not only to road users but people living near ongoing works.’
The three trials will get underway in January. As well as the funding to develop their projects, the winning ideas also get technical and commercial support from experts at Connected Places Catapult and at National Highways to help develop and scale up their innovations.
