Engineers pioneer cities that ‘self-repair’

Britain’s road network will in the future be repaired by robots – which can fill in a pothole in a minute.

A fleet of autonomous road vehicles or drones will travel around cities identifying cracks in roads and pavements and fixing them before potholes develop.

In just one minute, a robot with an attached 3D printer will be able to spray asphalt into a crack in the road to repair it.

Experts said that in towns and cities across Britain the autonomous vehicles or drones could operate at night, meaning there would be little disruption to traffic flows or the road network.

Professor Mark Miodownik, of University College London, said Leeds City Council was working with a team of engineers and designers to pioneer the idea of “selfrepairing cities”.

He told the Cheltenham Science Festival that Britain’s road network was falling apart due the backlog of repairs and the authorities did not have the resources to take preventative measures.

“Our idea is that when these small cracks happen we want to be able to see them – a drone flying around the road network would see them – and another drone would land and repair them,” he said.

“You do it at night and we can do it in about a minute. You stop over the crack, you repair the crack and it’s done.

“You could stop the traffic at 4am, hold it up for a minute.”