Skip to main content

Hi-tech road surface scanner surveys West Midlands highways

The condition of highways in the UK’s West Midlands is to be surveyed using the latest vehicle-based technology from Yotta DCL under a contract awarded by the consortium of West Midlands Local Authorities. The highway technology and surveying company will use its new Tempest survey vehicle to capture road surface condition and forward facing video across the region’s road network, plus pavement images at normal traffic speeds. Yotta DCL will survey a total of 1250 km of roads under the terms of the co
August 21, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
The condition of highways in the UK’s West Midlands is to be surveyed using the latest vehicle-based technology from 5956 Yotta DCL under a contract awarded by the consortium of West Midlands Local Authorities.

The highway technology and surveying company will use its new Tempest survey vehicle to capture road surface condition and forward facing video across the region’s road network, plus pavement images at normal traffic speeds.

Yotta DCL will survey a total of 1250 km of roads under the terms of the contract, which could be extended by three years. By providing both scanner and forward facing video and pavement images, the Authorities will be able to cross reference road condition data against high quality images. The camera technology onboard the new Tempest vehicle is a major advance in quality, breaks new ground in high definition video, and is unique to Yotta DCL.

Tempest has been developed using new processing technologies to improve accuracy and the vehicles are equipped with forward facing cameras which can be used to provide street level images.  The system is designed and built exclusively by Yotta DCL and is accredited by the UK’s Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) for UK scanner and Traffic Speed Condition Survey (TRACS) specifications.

“By overlaying the scanner data onto the video we can get a real life view of the data. The ability to cross reference the data against the video helps to guide our decision making as we can actually see the condition of the road surface on screen,” says Paul Price, senior engineer, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Europe’s road safety gains have stagnated EU
    March 17, 2017
    Europe will fail to meet its road death targets as enforcement budgets are slashed and drivers face an epidemic of distractions. The European Union will not achieve its aim of halving the number of people killed on its roads each year by 2020, delegates to Tispol’s (the organisation of European traffic police) annual conference in Manchester were told. “The target will be missed because there was only a 17% decrease in road fatalities across Europe between 2010 and 2015 when [the rate of reduction] should h
  • Sony helps Rio get a better view of the Olympics
    June 29, 2016
    With the Olympics approaching, Sony’s Stephane Clauss examines how the latest camera technologies can help cities cope with the huge crowds attending major events. This August will see more than 10,000 athletes head to Rio de Janeiro for the Olympics Games. Alongside them will be their coaching staff, a hoard of logistics teams, thousands of volunteer marshals (London 2012 had 70,000) and millions of spectators. All such major events have nervous jitters on the way to the opening ceremony. This year has see
  • ‘Free’ power for signs, shelters and so much more
    March 17, 2016
    David Crawford looks at the sunny side of the street. Solar power has been relatively slow in entering the transport sector, but a current blossoming of activity bodes well for the large-scale harnessing of an alternative energy that is zero-emission at source and, in practical terms, infinitely renewable. Traffic management and traveller information systems, and actual vehicles, are all emerging as areas for deployment. Meanwhile roads themselves are being viewed as new-style, fossil fuel-free ‘power stati
  • Where is tolling tech taking us?
    September 25, 2019
    From DSRC and RFID to GNSS or smartphones – which technology is ‘best’ for tolls, charging and pricing schemes? In the first of two articles, Josef Czako examines the options