Honda Has a Solution to Help Improve Road Conditions

For drivers as well as vehicles featuring some type of advanced driving assistance, damaged roads and lane markings can be a serious problem.

Honda’s Research Institute in the U.S. is developing a road condition monitoring system that uses vehicle technology—sensors, cameras, navigation system and more—to evaluate road conditions in an effort to detect possible hazards. The idea is to help road operators monitor and repair lane markings in a more frequent, efficient and cost-effective way.

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The automaker has teamed up with the Ohio Department of Transportation for a pilot program and plans to start providing road condition data in early 2022.

“Maintaining good road conditions helps keep everyone sharing the road safe,” says Paritosh Kelkar, scientist at Honda Research Institute USA, Inc. “Real-time, high-accuracy roadway data captured from connected vehicles has the potential to improve the process of identifying, reporting, and more quickly repairing hazardous road conditions.”

As explained in the video above, the system visually classifies lane lines to the left and right of the vehicle using four colour codes. Green and yellow classifications respectively indicate ideal to good lane marking conditions. The system displays grey classifications when there are no lane lines and red if the lane markings need repair.

That road condition information, including longitude and latitude coordinates along with relevant images and video clips, is captured by the vehicle, anonymized and then streamed to a secure platform for analysis by road operators. In the future, the system’s application will be expanded to monitor other types of road conditions including potholes.

We sure could use that to fix some of the worst roads in Canada, don’t you think?

The Honda Research Institute is also exploring how connected vehicles can access the anonymized data to adjust Honda and Acura Advanced Driver Assistance System’s perception settings, and if needed, warn drivers if lane markings are faded or are in need of repair.