Innovation is the name of the game. It always has been in any sector of traffic and transport technology, but over the past two years innovators have had something of a field day. Anyone who attended the ITS World Congress in Hamburg couldn’t fail to be impressed with just how much progress has been made in certain sectors of the industry – it wasn’t too long ago that the idea of an urban air logistics drone was considered “fanciful” and yet German firm VoloCopter were demonstrating exactly that.

But as far as road infrastructure goes, is there a limit? Infrastructure is infrastructure, right? Wrong. The technological revolution that is happening all around also includes giant leaps forward in the development of the simple, or not so simple, roadways. 
“The technological revolution in terms of communication between vehicles and infrastructure will determine the future design of roads, which will necessarily have to adapt to the new reality,” says Bartolemé. “Electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles and cooperative driving have different infrastructure requirements that must be integrated for joint use.