Researchers from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), belonging to the ai2 Institute, and the company Metalesa have developed a new intelligent parapet that is capable of identifying risky situations on roads and alerting users.
In addition, it can notify the municipal authority of accidents and events such as an impact against the parapet, the excessive speed of an approaching vehicle or record the interaction with the pedestrian crossing, as well as the weather conditions in the area. Designed for use on urban and interurban roads, although it can be adapted to any environment, it is the first approved parapet on the market with built-in active safety.
For its development, researchers from the UPV's ai2 Institute have designed communication and control software, as well as all the electronics installed inside the parapets, equipped with various sensors.
They have also integrated external visibility, temperature, radar, air quality and thermal camera sensors with which risk situations are detected that alert road users by turning on the lighting integrated inside the barrier.
Francisco Blanes, principal investigator of the ai2 Institute in the project, explains that "up to ten scenarios have been defined and a different behavior of the parapets that causes them to light up depending on each of these risk situations". In this way, if, for example, there is a traffic jam on a section entering the city, the guardrail lights up and signals the preceding section to warn drivers of this situation, and facilitate mobility and traffic management.
This smart parapet can also collect information, for example, on CO2 levels and send it, along with the rest of the variables, to a data collection platform hosted in the cloud.
«The idea was that an approved containment system, which has always been passive, would now incorporate smart city accessories that would allow it to become an active road safety system. This parapet is much more than a safety barrier for vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists and personal mobility vehicles (VMP)", says the director of Digital and Technological Innovation of Metalesa, César Valero.
The parapet is designed to be installed in urban and interurban areas, although the system is fully configurable and the electronics are flexible in terms of management, so that it can be adapted to different environments and scenarios, depending on the needs of each city.
«It is the first of our products with Plug technology
The company Dismuntel, located in the Polytechnic City of Innovation, science park of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, has also participated in the project. The company has provided the IoT gateway hardware infrastructure to which the ai2 researchers have incorporated the communication software with the cloud and the control of all the external sensors to the parapet.
