The RoadCast project goal is to build an innovative dynamic road sign that exploits available and affordable high technologies to be competitive with the static and variable road signs widely used in expressways and motorways. Available and affordable are the two fundamental keywords of the feasibility project. Available means that the project has considered state of the art solutions to solve problems like high conspicuity, retro reflectivity, intelligent control, wireless interconnection and low power consumptions. Affordable means that the project has looked at cost-effective ways to build the required features and to minimize the total cost of ownership to constitute a valid alternative to the actual road sign infrastructure.
The project has started with the forecast that traffic, vehicles and motorways are going to change significantly over the next few years. Information technology has been present in automotive industry since long time with the advent of cars’ computers, in-vehicle navigators, smart devices. But most of the road infrastructure remains basically asphalt and static road signs. Variable message signs are the way to provide dynamic information but they come at a high cost of management and cannot be deployed in a capillary way. The future will see autonomous vehicles and people share the same infrastructures. Still traffic signs will be the principal means to convey information to drivers either humans or automatic (self-driving) systems. Safety problems can arise when the infrastructure fail to communicate proper information. There is a need to adequate motorways to provide more accurate and uniformly distributed information.
The challenge of the RoadCast Project is therefore to imagine how the motorway industry will evolve to provide solutions that allow Road Authorities to guarantee safety and proper driving information for the next coming era of intelligent highways.
In order to verify the objectives stated for the project, the feasibility study has verified numerous conditions from technical to business passing through regulations and standards. Regulatory and initial phase of testing and roll-out are considered critical as they will pose a severe condition on the feasibility as they impact on actual traffic and drivers. These conditions cannot be verified in a feasibility project and therefore the feasibility has aimed to a second phase of project possibly involving end users (i.e. road authorities).
All these aspects have been considered ahead of any technical or economical constraint in order to conceive a product that can have the best probability of adoption among traffic management authorities. Which is feasibility at its core.
The feasibility project have been addressed from the point of view of road traffic management in order to be discussed with road traffic experts and responsible for motorways and expressways. The result of this approach have produced:
• A detailed System Requirement and Specification Technical Design Document
• A Preliminary Business Plan for investors and partners of the initiative
• A working prototype which will serve as a proof of concept system for demonstration and testing
• A concept for a follow-up to engage technological partners, end users and stakeholders to start the production and marketing/sales phase
