NIRA Dynamics AB launches Road Surface Information services in the US - Making safer mobility possible

NIRA Dynamics AB launches its road condition services, Road Surface Information, for the automotive and road maintenance industry on the US market. Based on the RSI data, NIRA builds multiple safety-related products. Road Health and Winter Road Insights are improving and optimizing road operations, by providing real-time updates on road surface conditions. Road Surface Alerts, which warns drivers for ice and slipperiness will be available for the US car manufacturers to improve driver safety.

“This marks a very important step for us at NIRA. Our teams have made a tremendous effort in opening up the flow of data from cars on US roads to the NIRA backend, and we are now able to provide information to improve road safety in the US through the various NIRA products. The large volume of car data makes it possible to improve safety by both improving in-car services, as well as optimizing road maintenance. I am very proud of what NIRA have achieved today!” says Lisa Åbom, CEO at NIRA Dynamics.

The number of connected vehicles with NIRA algorithms is growing rapidly and will reach 1.7 million during 2021, and now NIRA is taking the first step to providing the services on the US market. Both the road maintenance sector, as well as the automotive industry, will be able to use the NIRA services when the coverage reaches certain threshold levels.

“The launch of Road Surface Information in the US is an extremely important step in our global expansion, and we are thrilled to take the next steps together with our American customers and start working with large scale live road surface data,” says Johan Brynås, Business & Product Strategy Manager at NIRA.

Initially, Road Health will be made available for the maintenance players. By measuring the road roughness in real-time, municipalities, cities, or road operators can gain insight into what future road maintenance needs will be. Also, alerts can be delivered, making it possible to automatically detect deteriorating roads much quicker.

“As the US is putting a lot of focus on digitalization of services related to their infrastructure to improve performance and reduce cost, NIRA’s products are a perfect fit,” says Andreas Andersson, Business Area Manager at NIRA.

NIRA installs a software component into regular passenger vehicles which use the existing sensors of the vehicle to monitor the road surface. The results are shared in the NIRA cloud, where the data is aggregated and delivered to various mobility services.

For the future, road surface data is extremely important to be able to offer safe autonomous services in varying weather conditions. Already today, road friction information from NIRA can be used to adapt the speed of the car to existing road conditions.