It looks like some exotic piece of machinery for exo-planetary exploration, but in reality it is a futuristic concept cooked up by Volvo Construction Equipment of what an automated road paver in the third decade of this century might look like.
The Swedish construction equipment builder unveiled a model of its “Fenix” asphalt paver in late April at the Intermat equipment show in Paris. Volvo emphasizes that Fenix is only a concept at this point. The asphalt-paving process normally is a process involving “a lot of labor, a lot of machines, a lot of management, a lot of fumes and a lot of energy,” says Lorenzo Terreno, Volvo Construction’s advanced engineering coordinator for the project. Fenix would put a single operator in an air-conditioned cab controlling a machine that would carry out all these functions more efficiently.