The road has to reinvent itself in every period in response to innovations, societal issues and rising user expectations. The 5^th Generation Road (R5G) is firmly focused on the future and sets out to be automated, safe, sustainable and suited to travel needs. 

Several research teams are involved in work related to this flagship project for IFSTTAR, which is a stakeholder in the European Forever Open Road project. Most of the innovations featured in R5G are now mature, for example communication and energy exchange between the infrastructure, the vehicle and the network manager; recyclable materials with the potential for self-diagnosis and repair, a pavement surface that remains permanently optimal irrespective of climatic variations… Nevertheless, implementing them on an industrial scale at a reasonable cost still represents a real challenge.

Consultation with the stakeholders (researchers, industry, road network owners and users) has already established the priorities for the creation of full-scale demonstrators. The next stages are to achieve synergy between the technologies tested by the demonstrators, to manage the interfaces and get society to adopt R5G. Large-scale industrial application is planned for 2016-2018.

This video explains the principle of the 5th Generation Road, known as R5G © (video in French)