Still reeling from a drop in demand for commodities, Caterpillar Inc. missed Wall Street expectations on Oct 22, reporting third-quarter profit of only $368 million, including $101 million in restructuring costs.
Many firms and startups are trying to apply the techniques of 3D printing to building construction, including upscaling the tech to 3D-print entire structures from the ground up.
Claiming that pilot sightings of potentially unsafe drone flights have doubled since 2014, the U.S. Transportation Dept. and the Federal Aviation Administration on Oct. 19 said they are taking steps to develop a system to register unmanned aircraft.
The Federal Aviation Administration has proposed a $1.9-million fine against a Chicago-based drone operator for “endangering the safety of our airspace.
Snooper vehicles hoist bridge inspectors over the side of a bridge. One department of transportation is testing the use of drones to do the inspections, replacing the traditional method.
A group of my graduate students at Texas A&M University’s construction science dept. mapped the 100-year history of technological development relevant to the construction industry in the form of a Facebook timeline.
A 32-acre, $6.5-million mini-city at the University of Michigan looks like a film set, with building facades that mask empty interiors or surround vacant lots. But the infrastructure in the ghost town is technologically advanced, with sensors and cameras attached to traffic signals that communicate with the cars on the street.
Map Courtesy of MoDOT Related Links: Smart Roads Ahead: The Rise of Intelligent Infrastructure The Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission (MHTC) will open a 200-mile stretch of Interstate 70, from Kansas City to St. Louis, to private industry for use as a “laboratory” for construction of future generations of highways. The Missouri Dept. of Transportation oversees “The Road to Tomorrow” project.Since June, MHTC has received about 180 proposals from academia and business, says Tom Blair, project leader and MoDOT assistant district engineer, St. Louis. He will present the 20 most promising submissions to MHTC in December.Blair says he and his
Photo Courtesy of N.H. DOT Related Links: Smart Roads Ahead: The Rise of Intelligent Infrastructure Smart vehicles, stupid infrastructure—that’s a phrase often invoked by Ted Zoli, national bridge chief engineer for HNTB, when he talks about the advent of connected vehicles that communicate with each other. He asks, will smart vehicles communicate with infrastructure? And will future infrastructure communicate with engineers?The answer is yes, he predicts. Further, he designed a test bed, the Memorial Bridge, which runs over the Piscataqua River between New Hampshire and Maine. The 1,200-ft-long, two-year-old bridge is becoming a “living bridge”—a piece of self-diagnosing, self-reporting smart