Road infrastructure maintenance presents major financial and safety challenges globally. In Ireland alone, over 60% of drivers report vehicle damage from potholes, while Transport Infrastructure Ireland allocated €35 million in 2023 to national road maintenance. The manual inspection of road conditions is time-consuming and resource-intensive, particularly in the defect identification and assessment stages. Road AI helped develop a holistic, intelligent software application for automatic road pavement condition assessment. Leveraging computer vision, image processing, machine learning and deep learning techniques
The key objectives of Road AI are:
1.Detecting and evaluating road defects from video data.
2.Classifying road segments using PSCI (Pavement Surface Condition Index) ratings.
3.Providing a user-friendly visual interface for engineers and surveyors.
Road AI established a deployable tool applicable to both Irish and US road contexts and a comprehensive application integrating deep learning object detection, PSCI classification algorithms, and high-definition LCMS/LiDAR data analysis.
Expected Impact
1. Societal & Infrastructure Benefits: Faster and more accurate road defect detection can improve road user safety and reduce public spending on late-stage repairs.
2.Job Creation & Industry Growth: Road AI supports high-tech job creation in AI, data analytics, and software development in the broader smart infrastructure ecosystem.
3.International Commercialisation: Licensable tools and services will enable international ROAD AI to impact the U.S. market and international markets, expanding its addressable market.
