National Highways announces winners of roadworks innovation competition

National Highways launched its innovation competition to find new ways to improve people’s experiences of roadworks and earlier this year, 10 finalists received up to £15,000 each to investigate the feasibility of their ideas. 

Three of those solutions have now been selected to be trialled in real-life situations on England’s motorways and A-roads network, and will each receive up to £60,000 to take their ideas forward. 

The first winner is Cambridge-based Alchera Technologies which will use AI to improve roadworks planning by better understanding the impacts of different roadworks and road closures, ensuring the best option for road users and reduced delays. It will be working with Costain. 

Robok, also based in Cambridge, is the second winner. It will use AI-powered computer vision technology to analyse CCTV footage, offering a better understanding of both road user and road worker behaviour and helping to improve people’s experiences of roadworks. This trial will be supported by Balfour Beatty. 

WordNerds of Gateshead is the third winner and will provide new insights on people’s perception of roadworks using AI powered text-analytics, which will help National Highways make evidence-based improvements on planned works. Kier and Costain are supporting this trial. 

“Our goal in launching the competition was to find new ideas to help reduce the impact of roadworks on people and we are confident these exciting projects will be able to do just that,” said National Highways Executive Director for Major Projects, Nicola Bell. 

“We are putting them to the test on our network which will be the real challenge, but we are excited to see how well they perform and the difference they can make, not only to road users, but also to people living near ongoing works. 

“Roadworks are frustrating, but they are an essential part of managing our roads so anything we can do to ease the impact of these vital works is to be welcomed.” 

The three trials will get underway in January. As well as the funding to develop their projects, the winners also get technical and commercial support from experts at Connected Places Catapult and at National Highways to help develop and scale up their innovations. 

*www.logistics.org.uk/campaigns     

Published On: 07/12/2023 12:30:00

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