The Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation (HDOT) has launched a new pilot to test connected automobile hardware and software technologies to collect data on the rideability of roads.
“This pilot represents an opportunity for our daily drives to feed straight back into a system for improvement. Through the operation of the customized inspection vehicle, HDOT will be able to quickly gather information on the rideability of our roads in a way that was not possible even a couple of years ago,” said Hawaiʻi Gov. David Ige in a press statement.
Gov. Ige, HDOT Director Jade Butay, and Masamichi Watanabe, president and CEO of i-Probe Inc., signed a Memorandum of Understanding allowing HDOT access to i-Probe’s customized inspection vehicle and data through June 23, 2023.
The data collected by i-Probe will be compared to the data already compiled by HDOT to validate transportation-related trends, which can be used to plan road maintenance and improvements. The data from the customized inspection vehicle is available through a proprietary cloud site including “a mobile connection, collection, and analysis of data.”
HDOT currently gathers data on existing roadway conditions through a biennial survey of state routes using the Laser Crack Measurement System.
“The i-Probe customized inspection vehicle will make it easy and unobtrusive to collect the rideability data that we report to the Federal Highways Administration,” said Butay. “We’re looking forward to testing and validating the data and the possibilities for improving the way we maintain state highways this opens up.”
