Engineers at the University of Liverpool have launched a company to develop a self-driving robot to tackle the UK's potholes.
The university said the robot uses artificial intelligence to detect and repair potholes as it self-drives itself down the nation’s highways.
The company called Robotiz3d, will use the research from the university’s engineering robotics lab to produce a robot that will detect potholes and road cracks and perform ‘on-the-fly’ repairs - potentially transforming road maintenance while saving millions.
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The University of Liverpool said no autonomous currently technology exists to tackle the pothole crisis which plagues many parts of the country and is estimated to have cost more than £1billion to repair over the last decade.
The company website warns the UK’s pothole situation is expected to get worse due to ageing roads, the increasing number of road users, and enhanced vulnerability under new extreme climate scenarios.
With four years of research and two patent pending technologies, the joint university and A2E industries backed company said they are developing a "game-changing" technology that will see autonomous robots patrolling UK roads, identifying and repairing cracks by depositing sealing material before they turn into potholes.
Amongst the company founders are Dr Paolo Paoletti and Dr Sebastiano Fichera from the university’s School of Engineering who have an extensive track record of research, development and trialling the technology.
Dr Paolo Paoletti, Chief Technology Officer for the company, said: “Robotiz3d Ltd will develop an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven robotic system to address the national and international potholes problems.
“The proposed system will be able to autonomously detect and characterize road defects such as cracks and potholes, assess and predict the severity of such defects and fix cracks so that they do not evolve into potholes.”
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Dr Sebastiano Fichera, Technical Director of the company, said: “Current methods to detect and repair potholes are labour intensive and as such are slow, unsafe, and costly to the economy and environment.
“The new technology we are developing will make road maintenance tasks faster, cheaper, and cleaner and ultimately make roads safer and more accessible.”
