Complete pavement assessment based on Lidar-camera fusion

Road quality has a large impact on fuel consumption, driving comfort, standard of living, safety and road authority’s budgets. New technologies are enabling objective and productive ways of pavement inpsection, leading to more sustainable road management and new road construction methods. Different types of defects require different types of sensors. Fusion between camera and Lidar gives the full picture, revealing geometrical defects (such as rutting) but also visual defects (such as patches). Lane-wide, high resolution digital twins are analyzed by edge AI to create the complete pavement ID. The resulting insights allow road engineers to determine how, when and where to intervene, helping road owners to optimally spend their limited maintenance budgets. This new technology enables the move from scattered, artisanal inspection to systematic, network-wide periodic inspection.This presentation will explain the applied technology (hardware and software) and how it aligns with and outperforms traditional inspection methods.A number of global use cases will be presented, revealing how digital twins of pavement inspire research, road management and road construction methods.This presented approach does not only apply to tradional roads for cars. The shift to sustainable mobility forces road owners to define methods and tools for managing and maintaining also slow roads. The same Lidar+camera combo can be applied to bikelanes, sidewalks and even gravel roads.A vision will be shared on how Lidar technology will impact the future of road construction and pavement maintenance.