Automation to the road

(Disclaimer: This not a judgment on people or jobs. This is a post about technology's potential impact on people.)

As I was out for a walk this morning I had the opportunity to watch a road repair crew at work in our neighborhood. It was nice to see a well-orchestrated sequence of actions. Broadly they seemed to be:

1. A vehicle that melts and scrapes the existing asphalt off the road. It then moves it up a belt and...

2. ...spits it out into a dumpster moving in front of it at the same speed.

3. This is then followed by a vehicle with a metal brush that scrapes and cleans out the remaining asphalt.

4. Followed immediately by another vehicle that dumps some fresh asphalt.

5. The "support staff" consists of folks with blowers and brushes that ensure that the surface and surroundings are clean.

6. At some point more fresh asphalt is poured down and a roller comes over and smooths it out.

During the time there are always other drivers and folks that are either waiting for their parts or have nothing to do at that moment. They stopped to chat with me or were on their phones. (hopefully not reading this post)

It struck me that if we can automate a vehicle moving at 70 mph on a highway, we should be able to automate this well-defined sequence of steps and machinery moving at a much slower speed in a much more controlled environment. There's definitely a need for some human expertise to oversee the whole process and do the quality checks. But the bulk of the activities could probably be automated.

We could probably have just 2-3 people who can remotely control the set of vehicles and instruments used to lay a road. Small self-propelled robots/cars can position themselves at the edges of the work zone to warn/manage traffic. The human experts can intervene for specific issues or for quality checks.

A good operator of machinery can (and probably will) move up the chain and become a site supervisors. Other operators who have that critical knowledge can help with the decision support systems and help build that intelligence.

The economics would probably be the gotcha here. I have no idea of the cost of laying a road or the various line items. But I can see that being a driver to adoption of automation here. As could be the potential safety issues, e.g. what if a vehicle drives into the work area, or a pedestrian steps on the hot asphalt.

Other thoughts?