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(ethereal music)

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- [Narrator] Technology and transportation

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must go together.

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That's become the philosophy at TxDOT

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as the agency makes good

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on its vision of delivering mobility,

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enabling economic opportunity

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and enhancing the quality
of life for all Texans.

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Exploring the use of emerging technologies

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to improve transportation
has become a TxDOT priority.

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- We work with our research
team and they develop

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a portfolio of technologies
and it runs a gamut

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of IT related technologies,
actually more infrastructure

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and material focused ones,

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next generation vehicles or platforms,

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and we flesh out what are all the emerging

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technologies across that
spectrum, across that portfolio.

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Now, which ones do we want to focus on

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in maybe the coming year
and then coming months.

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- [Narrator] To keep technology in focus,

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TxDOT formed an external
advisory board called

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the Texas Technology Task force.

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- And you know when we started
this, what six or seven

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some odd years ago, we're
assigned to think, okay

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TxDot's traditionally an asphalt

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and concrete type organization,

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a vast majority of their
budget goes to building,

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the wonderful transportation
infrastructure we have

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in the state of Texas

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- Primarily the task
force members who have

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a lot of expertise in technology,
research and development,

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implementation or regulation, either from

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research institutions,
industry or public agencies,

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bring their experience to the meetings

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and to some of the talks
and discussions that we have

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to inform us of something
they might be hearing about.

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From there, we've got a research team

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that helps vet the technologies

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and what we're working towards called

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the technology utilization plan,

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which takes you to these
technologies and prioritizes them.

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- When we started looking at
technology, that again, six or

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seven years ago is when
automated vehicles were really

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starting to peak.

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They'd been around for a long time

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and people have looked
at them, but all of a

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sudden they started becoming real

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and so where I'm going with
this is that we take a look

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at what technologies are emerging,

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kind of the same timeframe,
the whole concept of big data.

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If you went and did an
internet search 10 years ago,

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big data, wasn't a term, now it's a term.

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Same thing with drones.

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- [Darran] So we spun off a
research project just on that

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to how might TxDot itself
use unmanned aerial systems

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and now those are being used

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more and more often across
the department for everything

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from bridge inspections, to
traffic incident management

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and clearance of accident
scenes more quickly.

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Another key part of the
work of this project

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has been just to generate
that thought process.

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What else could we be doing?

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Okay. You know we're
over here talking about

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improved striping, well,
what about improve markings

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and things like that that
might also enhance operations.

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So I think it's led to
some of that as well.

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- Every couple months
do like a peer review

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type of assessment of other states,

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according to each technology
to see what they've done,

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how they've done it, what were the costs?

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Who were the partners? What
are the lessons learned?

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And make sure and keep
a compilation of that

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so that as they are thinking
about moving forward

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we can offer that information
for their consideration.

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- [Darran} There are
people that are printing

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whole segments of of bridges now with

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concrete printing technologies.

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And that's something I think
we need to look at, right.

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We need to think, is that
something Texas needs to be doing

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is it a value add or is
that just a gee whiz thing?

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And there's a number of
other ones like that,

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it's time for us to move
forward and continue to

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look at those.

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So, yeah, I think for
the foreseeable future

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there is great value in having
this continuous discussion

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and this forward thinking
research and bringing that

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into a closer range for the department,

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then to either decide,
do we need more research

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a specific research topic,
or are we ready to begin to

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do something with it?

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And I think that's a great value

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of it's led to a lot of those initiatives.

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- [Narrator] For more
information and to find

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the publications for this project,

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please visit the TxDOT research library

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at the link shown below.