Bridgestone uses AI to provide insights into quality of roads

Bridgestone Mobility Solutions has launched Bridgestone Road Conditions to help commercial fleet owners better understand the state and quality of the roads.

The Bridgestone Road Conditions portfolio provides insights based on aggregated and anonymised data from Webfleet-connected vehicles.

Using sensors and vehicle data, the tool determines the locations of road damage, such as potholes, cracks and patches.

Bridgestone said the artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm enables the severity of road damage to be defined, helping drivers and fleet owners reduce the risk of accidents, as well as prevent damage to tyres and vehicles.

While cities and road authorities can utilise these insights for preventive maintenance and infrastructure planning.

Raghunath Banerjee, vice president of data solutions at Bridgestone Mobility Solutions, said: “Bridgestone Road Conditions can help increase road safety and comfort by providing real-time data insights on road damage that allow preventive road maintenance, infrastructure planning and optimised traffic flow.

“These advanced data solutions will play a fundamental role in the digital transformation of future mobility, enabling the development of smart cities, mobility-as-a-service providers as well as connected and autonomous vehicles. Following the Bridgestone E8 Commitment, our new portfolio of data solutions is contributing to a more sustainable and safer future of mobility. “

The Road Asset Visualisation solution also provides intelligence on roads and infrastructure by analysing multiple connected vehicle sensors as well as camera data.

The company said vehicle-mounted cameras use Edge AI capabilities to process data directly on the device in real-time, ensuring data privacy by uploading only anonymised data to the cloud for further analysis.

This way, road assets and characteristics such as road signs, traffic lights and lane markings can be visualised and flagged if they are damaged, vandalized or blocked by vegetation, Bridgestone said.