TECHNOLOGY : Lab Developing Machine That Eats Street Potholes : 2-man crews could do 10 times the work of 8 hand laborers.
CHICAGO — To any sore-rumped driver sick of thumping over roadway divots big enough to swallow the family pet, this could be the most soothing new idea since the invention of the sitz bath: an automated pothole plugger.
Within a year, researchers affiliated with Northwestern University hope to test the first prototype, which resembles a souped-up garbage truck loaded with high-tech gizmos, of a machine that will size up nettlesome highway dimples and then fill them in record time and at a fraction of current costs.
“First, the mechanism routs out the pothole, then it sucks up debris, and then a robot blows in material to fill the hole,” explained Bob Warren of Northwestern’s Basic Industry Research Laboratory in suburban Evanston.
If it performs as promised, the machine might do what generations of harassed and cash-strapped urban road officials could only dream of--speed many repairs and reduce road crews.
The average pothole paving team consists of seven or eight workers armed with jackhammers, picks and shovels. During good summer weather, they can fill about seven or eight holes a day.
By contrast, the machine’s designers say it will fix 50 to 70 holes a day, or night, while requiring only one or two operators. What’s more, it can work just as efficiently through the freeze-thaw cycles of the winter and spring, prime pothole-producing seasons in the icy Midwest and Northeast.
Dick Johnson, project manager, said the machine could also cut average repair costs from about $190 a hole to about $30.
Research into the vehicle was funded by a $1.1-million federal grant. Once it is developed, Johnson said, the vehicle will probably be marketed by a Phoenix manufacturer and cost between $200,000 and $250,000.
The nation’s exact pothole population is a matter of conjecture, but researchers at the Northwestern laboratory say that, at any given moment, there are at least 16 million little axle-busters out there somewhere on the nation’s roads.
Cost and speed are not the only factors driving the pothole project. Another is safety. Despite hazard cones, sawhorses and flag men, cars frequently plow into maintenance workers. More than 300 people were killed working on road projects last year, Johnson said. Not all workers are filling potholes, of course, but getting at least some of them off the road could cut down on deaths and injuries.
And then there are the traffic jams that inevitably crop up whenever lanes are closed to facilitate repairs. Johnson said the machine could enable highway officials to schedule most of their pothole fixing at night or on weekends, when it would be the least disruptive.
Not everybody is expected to be wild about the machine--particularly those road workers who always seem to be reading the paper, eating their lunch, ogling passersby of the opposite sex or otherwise loafing when taxpayers pass.
A pothole machine might help curtail such shenanigans by reducing the number or workers or, at the very least, sending excess workers to jobs where somebody can keep an eye on them.
Smoother roads could also put a dent in the repair business. “Hopefully, we can do something to damage the business of the auto alignment shops,” Johnson said, only half-jokingly.
