Road

Startup Addibots is looking to help cut the man hours required to maintain our cities, wheeling out a roving 3D printing robot it imagines will scoot around town mending dodgy road surfaces.

Besides the fact that road salt gets all over our cars and clothing, it also has to be reapplied throughout the winter, harming the environment in the process. If a new type of asphalt reaches production, however, salt-spreading may become a thing of the past.​

Technology to power electric vehicles wirelessly from under the road surface is about to be trialed in the UK. Highways England has announced that it plans to carry out off-road (test track) trials with a view to carrying out subsequent on-road trials. The technology would increase the range of EVs.

Asphalt covers more than 94 percent of paved streets in the US, but have we gone down the wrong road with our choice of building material? A Dutch firm has unveiled plans for roads made from plastic, claiming they would last longer and cut construction and maintenance time.

Jaguar Land Rover claims that potholes cause £2.8 billion (US$4.3 billion) worth of damage every year in Britain alone. Now the car company is developing the Pothole Alert system, which can not only identify the location and severity of potholes, but can also warn other vehicles about them.

Imagine taking a road trip from the UK to the US, via Russia. According to The Siberian Times, this might soon be possible.

The world's first solar bike path is set to open in the Netherlands next Wednesday. The SolaRoad will run through Amsterdam's northern suburb of Krommenie and will feature concrete slabs embedded with solar panels to convert energy from the sun into electricity for the grid.

Drivers on a road in the Netherlands are now being guided by glow-in-the-dark road markings. The N329 in Oss is being used to pilot the concept, which is part of the Smart Highway project by Heijmans and Studio Roosegaarde. Glowing Lines is aimed at increasing visibility and safety.

Genty has updated and uprated the design of its 2015 Akylone hypercar concept to provide even more power, with a 366 CID V8 with twin turbos that promises to put out more than 1,200 bhp, and provide the Akylone with a blistering 0-62 mph (0-100 km/h) time of 2.7 seconds.

Almost half a billion animals die from car collisions per year in Brazil alone, generating a negative impact on biodiversity. Brazilian ecologists have now created an app called Urubu to help them collect data on roadkill hotspots in order to make roads and railways safer.

With too much salt applied to road surfaces to prevent icing having a detrimental effect on vehicles, infrastructure and the environment, engineers at Carlos III University have developed an optical sensor that can detect the amount of salt on the road in real time.

A newly-developed system uses the weight of vehicles driving past on the road, to generate electricity.