International design and innovation firm Carlo Ratti Associati (CRA) is collaborating with ANAS, an Italian government-owned road construction and maintenance company, to design a smart highway system that will stretch across more than 1,500 miles of roads and highways in Italy. Dubbed ANAS Smart Road, the project aims to manage the traffic and enhance road safety, according to a firm release.
The system will utilize drones and “flying poles”—a series of grounded smart poles that are equipped with sensors and in-motion Wi-Fi connectivity. The drones can take on various tasks, ranging from “monitoring tunnels, viaducts, or other remote pieces of infrastructure, to bringing medicine or other first-aid equipment to drivers, to detecting accidents, fires, or floods happening close to a highway,” according to CRA. Additionally, the poles will be able to detect pollution through air quality sensors as well as sense weather conditions, or act as charging stations for the drones. “Thanks to the data collected by the poles, the system can inform drivers, in real time, of the conditions of the road ahead,” says the CRA in the same release. “Direct, customized messages can be sent to each driver’s mobile phone or to each vehicle’s on-board navigation system, which in turn can give their own feedback back to the system.”
Carlo Ratti Associati
