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(ambient music)

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- [Narrator] For decades,
measuring the amount

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of friction on state
roadways has been done

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with special breaking equipment and water.

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The process requires lots of man-hours

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and lots of water, but
that tedious process

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may be changing.

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Researchers with the Center
for Transportation Safety

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are turning to technology that would allow

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friction measurement to
take place without water

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and at highway speeds.

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- Promote safety is one of TxDOT's

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goals and objectives.

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Skid resistance plays a critical role

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in maintaining the safe
roads for the state of Texas.

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- You can measure friction
in two different ways;

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directly or indirectly.

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More state DOTs own equipment

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that can measure friction directly.

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They drive on the road, they apply water,

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and they measure the friction.

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The issue with this
direct type of measurement

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is that they use lot of water

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and make these pieces of
equipment very inefficient.

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A state like TxDOT can only measure

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about 25% of their farm-to-market network

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and only 50% of the interstate network

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on an annual basis.

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- By applying the high-speed
3D laser technology,

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this project proposed to collect and use

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pavement surface texture data as a proxy

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of surface skid.

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- We implement a high-speed,
high-definition laser

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that can measure the bigger features

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on the surface of the road,

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that we call it macro texture.

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But the newest laser can also measure

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the smaller features, which
we call it micro texture.

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We use this information
and we calculate friction.

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- In this project, actually,

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the research team
proposed a new instrument

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which has two major components.

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One is called grip tester.

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The other is called laser texture scanner.

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The researchers, they use this equipment

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to collect a sample for
different pavement types

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on highways near Austin.

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- It has about 30
different pavement types,

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and we obtain accuracies in the order

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of 80 to 90% on friction prediction.

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- If we have a texture
which can be collected

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in a faster way and we have model

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to correlate the texture with the skid,

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we can have a full
coverage of entire network,

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which will help the pavement engineers

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make a better decision.

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- This is laser. We don't need water.

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You can attach this laser to a vehicle,

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drive 50, 60, 70 miles an hour,

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and obtain full coverage
on an annual basis.

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This is huge for TxDOT,

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particularly from a safety point of view.

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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.