Development of a Smart Retroreflective Particle a "Tetra-Chip" to be used as a Substitute for "Drop-On" Road Beads

开发智能逆反射颗粒“Tetra-Chip”，用作“Drop-On”路珠的替代品

• 批准号: 10072696
• 金额: $ 4.19万
• 依托单位: SEEWARD LTD
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Grant for R&D
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=10072696
• 关键词: Development; Smart; Retroreflective; Particle; Tetra

Accurate and dependable positioning of vehicles is essential for automated and autonomous vehicles and lateral positioning is especially important. Just think of a thirty ton driverless lorry drifting into the wrong lane.During the transition from having only human drivers to a mixed fleet ie. Vehicles with human drivers only, automated vehicles with human drivers and fully autonomous CAVs on the roads. The road network will have to be properly prepared so that both humans and machines can read road-markings in order to make the correct decisions. Part of how this will be achieved is to ensure that lane markings can be read by both humans and machines.Detection of lane markings at night is achieved by the retroreflection of a vehicle headlight back to the driver of the vehicle, or a sensor, in a machine driven vehicle. This retroreflection is facilitated by exposing tiny glass beads embedded in the road-marking paint. The exposition of these tiny glass beads occurs as a consequence of the abrasive effect of vehicle roadwheels on the road-markings, so it is essentially a system. However, for the system to be functioning as it should, takes time and obviously immediate retroreflection is required for the prevention of accidents. Accordingly, in order to resolve this issue, when new markings are laid down, they are surface-dressed with "drop-on" road beads. Unfortunately a significant proportion of these "drop-on" road beads are lost in the first few days, due to the abrasive effect of vehicle roadwheels, and/or by being blown/washed away by inclement weather due to poor adhesion. This is wasteful in a "green" sense and contributes to global warming,because the manufacture of road beads is energy inefficient. It is also wasteful in an economic/commercial sense and reduces the effectiveness of the road-markings contribution to accident prevention.Another issue affecting standard and "drop-on" road beads is that they do not retroreflect at night in wet/rainy conditions (when they are most needed), due to a film of water covering the glass beads which alters their refractive index and reflection becomes specular rather than retro.Seeward Ltd has developed a Smart retroreflective particle designed to address all these issues and has the potential to be used as a substitute for "drop-on" road-beads. The aim of this this project is to test the performance of the particle under laboratory conditions prior to licensing the technology for commercial manufacture.

准确可靠的车辆定位对于自动化和自主车辆至关重要，横向定位尤其重要。想象一下一辆三十吨的无人驾驶卡车驶入错误的车道。在从只有人类司机到混合车队的转变过程中。仅配备人类驾驶员的车辆、配备人类驾驶员的自动驾驶车辆以及道路上的全自动 CAV。道路网络必须做好适当的准备，以便人类和机器都可以读取道路标记，从而做出正确的决定。实现这一目标的部分原因是确保车道标记可以被人和机器读取。夜间车道标记的检测是通过车辆前灯向后反射回车辆驾驶员或机器驱动车辆中的传感器来实现的。通过暴露嵌入道路标线涂料中的微小玻璃珠来促进这种逆向反射。这些微小玻璃珠的暴露是车辆负重轮对道路标记的磨损作用的结果，因此它本质上是一个系统。然而，要使系统正常运行需要时间，并且显然需要立即进行逆向反射以防止事故发生。因此，为了解决这个问题，当铺设新的标记时，它们的表面被“直接铺上”的路珠覆盖。不幸的是，由于车辆负重轮的磨损作用和/或由于附着力差而被恶劣天气吹走/冲走，这些“滴落”路珠的很大一部分在最初几天就丢失了。这从“绿色”意义上来说是一种浪费，并且会导致全球变暖，因为路珠的制造能源效率低下。从经济/商业意义上讲，这也是一种浪费，并降低了道路标记对预防事故的有效性。影响标准和“直接”路珠的另一个问题是，它们在夜间潮湿/下雨的条件下（最需要它们的时候）不会逆反射，因为玻璃珠上覆盖着一层水膜，改变了玻璃珠的折射率，反射变成镜面而不是逆反射。Seeward Ltd 开发了一种智能型路珠。 逆向反射颗粒旨在解决所有这些问题，并有可能用作“滴落式”路珠的替代品。该项目的目的是在获得商业制造许可之前在实验室条件下测试颗粒的性能。