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National Highways picks firms to develop AI solutions for road construction and maintenance

Three tech firms win funding to develop solutions with key contractors
By Tim Clark

Three firms have won a competition run by National Highways and Connected Places Catapult to develop artificial intelligence (AI) technology that will help ease disruption caused by roadworks.

Alchera Technologies, Robok and Wordnerds will each receive up to £60,000 to bring their ideas forward.

New AI functions could enhance driver experiences

The competition sought to find new or existing technology that can make a positive difference the public’s experience of roadworks.

The grants will enable the companies to work with tier one contractors Balfour Beatty, Costain and Kier to see how their solutions work on A-roads and motorways.

Cambridge-based Alchera Technologies aims to use AI to improve roadwork planning by better understanding the impacts of different roadworks and road closures. It will work with Costain to trial the new technology.

Robok, also based in Cambridge, will work with Balfour Beatty to use AI-powered computer vision technology to analyse CCTV footage. The aim is to offer a better understanding of road user and road worker behaviour and help to improve the public’s experience of roadworks.

Gateshead-based Wordnerds will work with Kier and Costain to use AI powered text analytics to analyse people’s perceptions of roadworks. This will help National Highways make evidence-based improvements to planned work.

The competition’s aim was to allow smaller enterprises to showcase their ideas. These firms have not traditionally had the opportunity to work directly with National Highways and its supply chain. The three selected came from 10 finalists that had previously been awarded £15,000 each to investigate the feasibility of their proposals for real life trials.

As well as the funding to develop their projects, the winning ideas also get technical and commercial support from specialists at Connected Places Catapult and at National Highways to help develop and scale up their innovations.

National Highways executive director for major projects Nicola Bell, said: “Our goal in launching the competition was to find new ideas to help reduce the impact of roadworks on people and we are confident these exciting projects will be able to do just that.

“We are putting them to the test on our network which will be the real challenge. But we are excited to see how well they perform and the difference they can make not only to road users but to people living near ongoing works.

“Roadworks are frustrating, but they are an essential part of managing our roads so anything we can do to ease their impact is to be welcomed.”

The development of AI solutions could have a huge impact on infrastructure and civil engineering.

UBY chief technology officer Sebastien Laboureau explained that there is huge potential for proven technology to be applied in specific ways to tackle known challenges.

“For example, algorithms such as k-NN, neural networks and using innovative approaches like 3D point clouds can be deployed on construction projects. UBY is using k-NN to take air particle data and identify its components – speeding up the analysis of air quality to seconds and providing real time data for site managers to act on.

“Neural network algorithms let us recognise relationships between vast amounts of data – for example, identifying the location, loudness and the likely source of a sound like drilling or traffic so a decision [on how to reduce this noise] can be made quickly onsite.”

At the same time, new technologies are emerging fast and the industry needs to respond quickly to understand what problems can be solved as tools become available.

That could be particularly important for the growing amount of highway maintenance and renewal work on ageing assets.

Automatic analysis of 3D point clouds offers new ways to recognise cracks and structural issues from photographs. They also enable more efficient monitoring and surveying, which in turn will enable earlier and more targeted interventions.

Alchera Technologies’ roadworks planning technology has been put to use but could benefit from scaling up.

Alchera Technologies co-founder and chief executive Anna Jordan said: “Alchera already works with major highways customers. It was a natural progression to seek a relationship with the biggest customer in our home market, National Highways.

“The competition provided us with that opportunity. The trial enables us to prove our technology in day-to-day operations and demonstrate the value to National Highways, seeking to establish a business-as-usual relationship at conclusion.”

Wordnerds is in a similar position. Having applied its text analytics technology in other organisations it will now have the opportunity to support a major infrastructure asset manager.

Wordnerds innovation manager Ruth Erdal said: “Wordnerds is focused on helping large organisations understand and act on customer feedback, and it’s been so energising to see National Highways’ vision – of keeping the customer at the centre of everything they do.

Having worked closely with National Highways and Costain in the feasibility phase, we are very excited to be undertaking a live trial with both organisations, plus Kier, in 2024. Together we will demonstrate how AI can improve the way the sector deals with feedback, and ultimately impact the way we all experience roadworks.”

Robok on the other hand, is a computer vision start-up looking to establish its new technology. Robok co-founder and chief executive Hao Zheng said: “We are excited to team up with National Highways and Balfour Beatty utilising CCTV cameras at roadworks to improve road user experiences. This project has the potential to unlock rich information to drive informed decisions, benefiting drivers, workers and the wider community as a whole.”

The competition is funded through National Highways’ designated funds.