Potholes will be repaired by robots, predicts expert

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.

“For motorways it is a different problem but for roads in Cheltenham and bigger cities, I think night-time autonomous vehicles would have almost no impact on traffic.”

Prof Miodownik said the technology could also be used in the construction industry, as a firm in Holland has attached a spot-welding machine to a robot and has been building a structure.

“There are lots of technical issues to solve but we are in the phase now where robots are not a big part of construction,” he said.

“But it seems undoubtedly our future that when you look at future construction sites you will see robots building a building or a bridge.

“The repair of that building or bridge can be done by robots as the design will have already taken into account that robots need access.”