Dutch design and engineering firms, Studio Roosegaarde and Heijmans Infrastructure, have joined forces to developed a ‘Smart Highway’ that is interactive, sustainable and safer as a result.
The Smart Highway will use five new technologies that the companies see as being available within five years, one of which is ‘Dynamic Paint’. With temperature sensitive properties, under normal road conditions, the paint remains transparent, but when temperatures drop enough to create hazards like black ice, it becomes visible and reveals warning symbols on the road.
A second technology is ‘Glow-in-the-Dark Road’, which uses luminescent paint that absorbs sunlight during the day and glows for up to ten hours at night. This technology will increase visibility and reduce the need for conventional road lighting.
Designer Daan Roosegaarde had the idea for the dynamic and luminescent paint after he noticed that when it comes to transportation, everything has been improved except the roads themselves. “It’s like the glow in the dark paint you and I had when we were children, but we teamed up with a paint manufacturer and pushed the development. Now, it’s almost radioactive.”
Another innovation to aid with lighting is the ‘Interactive Light’, which uses sensors to detect an approaching car, at which point it switches on. The light grows brighter as the car comes near, then dims as it passes. In this way, the road is only lit when needed rather than pouring light onto empty streets.
‘Wind Light’ technology takes interactive lighting one step further, by using pinwheel generators installed on the roadside, like a row of sunflowers. As vehicles pass by, the displaced air turns the generators, which then powers the lights.
Finally, the Smart Highway also has an ‘Induction Priority Lane’ for electric cars, whereby induction coils embedded beneath the road surface charge the cars as they travel over it.
The Smart Highway idea has already won the ‘Best Future Concept’ at the Dutch Design Awards 2012. The idea has attracted interest from India as well as the United States. “India is really keen on it; they have a lot of blackouts there, it would be hallelujah to them”, said Studio Roosegaarde communications partner Emina Sendijarevic.
Studio Roosegaarde and Heijmans Infrastructure plan to have a prototype of the road operating sometime in 2013, with the first few hundred metres of glow-in-the-dark, weather-indicating road installed in the province of Branbant in mid-2013, followed by the induction lanes, interactive and wind-powered lighting within the next five years.
