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How can we precisely measure road roughness and the resulting drivers' comfort with science? The research team led by Dr. Chen Shih-Huang, Director of the Department of Civil Engineering at NCU, collaborated with Nichireki Co., Ltd from Japan in assembling “Fuji-Jade Summit 1,” a brand new pavement surface condition survey vehicle. It is the fruit of success nurtured by Nichireki’s more than 70 years of experience and new technology and 50 years of solid academic foundations built by the Department of Civil Engineering at NCU. In addition, it was the first time that the Taiwanese successfully applied the 3D pavement surface image system to conduct an automatic pavement survey, which made a great leap in Taiwan’s technology of pavement surface condition detection. 

The technology was also applied to the pavement surface condition survey of the newly constructed circuit surrounding the campus of NCU. The detection system uses high-resolution linear-laser cameras and image recognition software to show the 3D pavement surface condition in detail, calculating various types of indexes related to pavement maintenance. Furthermore, NCU has installed the pavement maintenance management system and has applied AI to the whole detection process; every single detail of pavement surface conditions of the circuit will never escape from the detection.

“Taiwan's pavement surface condition detection technology has developed for more than 20 years, and our research team has been devoted to the development since 2010. It was a pleasure that we could work together with Nichireki Co., Ltd from Japan and jointly sign the ‘Reaching the Summit of Mt. Fuji and Mt. Jade: International Cooperation Project’ in 2017. The project was named after the highest mountains in Japan and Taiwan. It conveys the idea that we expect to reach the top together through this cross-national technology collaboration!” said Dr. Chen.

Photo by Chen Ju-Chih