The first “smart road” designed by Anas with technological support from Tecnositaf makes its debut in Cortina, on the occasion of the World Ski Championships scheduled from February 7 to 21, a smart road that is being tested for the first time in Italy on a section usually traveled by hundreds of vehicles.

The objective of the project, a precursor of what will be the mobility of tomorrow and which paves the way for the advent of autonomous driving, is to improve road safety and optimize the control and monitoring of the network. At the center of the experience is the national road SS51 of Alemagna, which, in the section that goes from Longarone to Cortina, can count on an infrastructure made up of cameras and sensors that will monitor the traffic flow, receiving data from the passage of vehicles on approximately 80 km of road section.

The project is signed, as mentioned, by Anas – who manages the road – in collaboration with other companies, including tecnositafda Tecnositaf, a Turin-based company specializing in the intelligent transport system, or in the design of intelligent roads that communicate with the cars and, in the case of the Cortina test site, which also allows dialogue between cars.

“We have been working with Anas for more than 10 years for the development of smart solutions from the point of view of mobility – explains Giuseppe Celia Magno, CEO of Tecnositaf – Cortina is a unique experience of its kind. We have created a road equipped with sensing technologies that can identify and manage everything to do with traffic and roads in near real time, from accidents to queues, and communication between infrastructure and cars is also added between car and car “.

From road-car communication to car-to-car communication
Indeed, poles equipped with cameras, weather sensors and antennas have been installed along the section of the national road to ensure connectivity to vehicles, allowing communication: “All vehicles today cannot rely on this kind of technology – explains Celia Magno – and this is why we have decided to install on each machine “on-board units”, control units capable of speaking to the machine and transmitting to it the conditions of movement and movement . If, for example, I have a problem with the brakes or have an accident, my on-board unit communicates it via the Smart Road network to other connected cars ”.

The information collected by the infrastructure is transmitted to the Anas operations room installed specifically in the center of Cortina, and processed via the Rmt system (Road Management Tool), a platform with which it is possible to guarantee real-time supervision of the road. , monitoring traffic flows and potential hazards, and responding to hazards.

“On the road, there are also several galleries, also connected and monitored to ensure that service levels are optimal – concludes the CEO of Tecnositaf – This test site is part of an investment plan that Anas is carrying out on the ‘entire national network, and which provides for the construction of smart roads along entire routes.

Anas now manages around 30,000 km of roads, and preparatory work for the creation of smart roads has also started on the Grande Raccordo Anulare, on the A2, in different areas of Sicily. The infrastructure will remain after the experiment is completed, and the data will be used for development on the other sections.

“This project is of international importance – concludes Celia Magno – Smart roads and smart cities are part of the revival of all countries, they are at the center of the processes of digitization and the revolution of mobility, and that of smart road will be a technology to enable autonomous driving. Today we are moving towards 5G, but the protocols for future standards are still being defined. The Cortina experience is a kind of “demo” which will allow us to see how the roads of the future will work ”.