INTRO

INTRO - Intelligent Roads

INTRO is a research project supported by the European Commission with the aim of developing innovative methods for increased capacity and safety of the road network. This combines sensing technologies and local databases with real-time networking technologies.

The project is being conducted by FEHRL institutes together with partners from the ITS and research sector.

INTRO will develop innovative methods to increase the capacity of existing and new transport infrastructure by maximising safety and well being of drivers, passengers, crew and pedestrians. Three main strands of research will be conducted:

Surface safety monitoring

• Integration and testing of real-time warning systems at network level to achieve a significant decrease in the number of accidents due to ”surprise effects” from sudden local changes in weather resulting in low friction and hence skidding.  
   
• Increasing drivers´ attention to low road friction by only a few percent may result in significantly higher reduction of accident rates due to its non-linear relationship. 
   
• Europe’s most advanced driving simulator will be used to optimise for driver responses to new types of information.

Traffic and safety monitoring

• Combination of different sensor data will enable the estimations of entirely new real-time safety parameters and performance indicators to be used in traffic monitoring and early warning systems.

Intelligent pavement and intelligent vehicles

• Innovative use and combination of new and existing sensor technologies in pavements and bridges in order to prevent accidents, enhance traffic flows and significantly extend the lifetimes of existing infrastructure.  
   
• A prolonged lifetime of high capacity roads could thus be obtained using novel methods for early warning detection of deterioration and damage of road surfaces.

Partners:

Arsenal Research,FEHRL,INRETS, ISIS, Prisma Solutions, ROC Rigobert Opitz Consulting, Swedish National Road and Transport  Research Institute (VTI), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (LAVOC-EPFL), TRL Limited, TSS

Coordinator:

Bengt Walivaara, INTRO Project Manager
Swedish National Road and Transport  Research Institute (VTI)
S-581 Linköping
Sweden
Tel.: +46 13 204208
Fax: +46 13 204060
E-mail: bengt.walivaara@vti.se