The transportation industry is in the midst of the most dramatic shift since Henry Ford introduced horseless carriages.

Already, we are seeing the increased use of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) which, along with the introduction of autonomous vehicles in the next few decades, will bring profound changes to vehicles and the environment in which they operate.

Well before fully autonomous vehicles and trucks can appear on the roads, work is underway to build an entirely new ecosystem needed for this technology to operate. This requires extensive research to create intelligent transportation materials and systems and is a collaborative effort between industry, academic institutions and govern­ment organisations.

The future of transportation will require roadways to become readable by machines. Part of how this will be achieved are road markings that can be read by sensors to enable ADAS and autonomous systems to detect lines.

There is strong industry consensus that pavement markings play an integral role in moving to higher levels of automa­tion. On February 21, 2017 the House Transportation Committee held a hearing on building infrastructure for the 21st century and invited comment from industry leaders. A written statement by BMW of North America CEO Ludwig Willisch stated that roadways must be properly prepared for autonomous cars so that vehicle sensors and cameras can read road markings and signage to make the correct decisions. Willisch added that well-maintained streets and uniform lane markings, as well as consistent signs and traffic signals, would be helpful in accelerating the deployment of [autonomous vehicles].

Another critical element of creating smarter infrastructure is systems that allow vehicles to interpret information, and central to this is the evolution of automated sensing and the infrastructure to be sensed. While traditional signs and pavement markings were designed for human vision, future infra­structure will need to provide information to both humans and sensing systems designed for ADAS and automated vehicles.

For its part, 3M is working on improving the visibility of pavement markings for both humans and machines across a variety of daylight and night-time conditions. In general, enhancements to pavement mark­ings designed to improve detectability by the human eye also improve detection by an optical camera in a vehicle. In fact, a camera ultimately provides a more consistent evaluation of the pavement marking than the average human eye and both human and machine vision need to be supported for the foreseeable future. This drives a need for common objectives: pavement markings must exhibit sufficient levels of daytime contrast compared to the adjacent roadway surface, and provide enough retro reflectivity and colour contrast at night-time in ways that ensure both humans and camera systems can see the lines while driving.