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China amazes the world with a new 157-kilometer highway built without the help of any human being, using only 10 high-tech autonomous machines

Written by Valdemar Medeiros
Published 30/10/2024 às 09:00
China amazes the world with new 157-kilometer road built without the help of any human beings
Photo: SANY/Reproduction
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China builds new 157 km road without human intervention: just 10 machines were used to complete the project in a fully automated way.

The road built without human help: Building a road is a complex task, involving detailed studies and extensive work with machinery to apply, press and level the asphalt until it reaches the required uniformity. But China has just taken this practice to a new level, announcing the construction of a road entirely made by autonomous machines, without any human intervention. Check out how this revolutionary technology was used to build the new Chinese road, revealing an innovation that could transform infrastructure in the future.

New road built without human help is 157,79 km long

China is paving a 150-kilometer highway where only robots control the autonomous machines, and workers only supervise. Starting in Beijing and extending 157,79 km towards Macau, China has managed to build the first highway paved entirely without direct human intervention, using only autonomous machines, with a width of up to four lanes.

China amazes the world with new 157-kilometer road built without the help of any human beings
The machines are operated by robots, while humans only supervise (Image: SANY/Reproduction)

This is a project to expand the Beijing-HK Expressway, which stretches 2.272 kilometers. The completed new China highway project covers the distance between Beijing and Hebei. To achieve this, three state-owned groups worked together.

These companies, which developed a new road built without human help, are the China Railway 11th Bureau (which led the project), Hubei Communications Investment (responsible for paving) and Liaoning Guotai Road and Bridge (which worked on compaction). Sany Group was responsible for providing the machinery that is not operated by humans.

Understand why China's new road is so innovative

Local media reports that the presentation of the completed project was made public, coinciding with a conference related to the creation of roads and other infrastructure. The 700 participants were invited to take a closer look at the new road built without human assistance, where they were able to see how the autonomous machines work.

China's new road is particularly spectacular because it is a 19,25-meter-wide road that uses ten autonomous machines. These vehicles are responsible for distributing all the material, which is made up of a mixture of compacted sand and stones. Bituminous binder is then added, which shapes the entire surface and prevents the layers from separating.

In the Chinese project, pavers were used, responsible for distributing the materials, and autonomous rollers, responsible for applying the necessary pressure so that the entire surface is leveled and has the expected hardness.

Furthermore, the entire development of China's new road was monitored with drones to carry out topography work to confirm that the expected parameters were being followed, as explained by GPC Systems, a company specializing in software development.

The technology used in the construction of China's new highway

In the formation called 1+3+3+3, the autonomous machines were supervised by collaborators, but in several environments the time savings achieved are valued, since the development of specific algorithms for the new road, built without human help, allowed work with millimetric prediction and greater speed than using human personnel. 

However, the published information does not state how many workers were sidelined or how much time and money was saved. Such precision allowed the entire runway to be paved in a single pass, without the need for smaller rollers to correct deviations.

Using technology, the machinery has operated with such precision that it is no longer necessary to review the spaces that were once built. This is what they call the zero edge, because there is no substantial separation between the machine and the curb, where the width of the road ends.

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Valdemar Medeiros

Journalist in training, specialist in creating content with a focus on SEO actions. Writes about the Automotive Industry, Renewable Energy and Science and Technology

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