Skip to main content

The latest weapon in the fight against potholes? Your smartphone

Roadbotics

Keeping tabs on the quality of roadways isn’t an easy job. With tens of thousands of miles for public officials to monitor, and a limited budget to do so with, it’s no surprise that some public roads can fall into a state of disrepair that makes them unpleasant to drive on.

Recommended Videos

That’s something a tech company with the brilliant (if you love puns as much as we do!) name RoadBotics is hoping to help solve. It has developed some smart AI algorithms that work with the cameras found in smartphones to continuously monitor road conditions as drivers travel around the United States. Its deep learning technology is designed to spot the kind of anomalies that experienced roadway inspectors are trained to identify. It then uses this data to create a dynamic map so that public officials can understand the status of their roads, streets, bike paths, walkways and bridges in almost real-time.

“We use a standard smartphone and any vehicle, in combination with our cloud-based deep learning platform, to assess the quality of roadways including road surfaces, signage and other common features of urban, rural roads and highways,” RoadBotics CEO Mark DeSantis told Digital Trends. “A standard cell phone is mounted anywhere on a dash or windshield with the phone’s camera pointed forward. The app is turned on and begins collecting video data. That video data is stored on the phone until the the phone sees a friendly Wi-Fi, at which point all of the image data is automatically uploaded to our platform, which then produces a multicolored road network assessment map.”

The technology is currently being used in 22 municipalities, towns, cities, and counties across eight states. DeSantis said that the first deployment outside the U.S. is set to be announced soon.

“Currently, we collect the data on behalf of our customers to add to our customer’s convenience as well as learn in detail some of the challenges with collecting data,” he said. “However, we’ve been testing several fleet, customer and even crowd-sourced data collection tools.”

Whether private citizens would be willing to collect data for their public officials in exchange for better maintained roadways remains to be seen. Hey, maybe local governments could throw in a small tax credit as a thank you to users who were happy to help!

Luke Dormehl
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
Google AI will turn your fashion ideas into a real sample for shopping
Google Shopping matches AI images with real prsssoduct.

AI has been a part of the Google Shopping experience for a while now. In October last year, Google started showing an AI-generated brief with suggestions about the products users are looking for, alongside tailored product listings.

A month prior to that, the Shopping tab added an AI-powered virtual try-on experience featuring various body shapes to show the right size fitting. Now, Google is giving it another AI-fueled update that involves literally turning your fashion ideas into a digital garment, one that will be used to find similar pieces of real clothing items.
How AI will reinvent shopping
Let’s say you are on the hunt for ”pink socks with blue flowers and red polka dots.” Entering that query may not necessarily find you real products matching that description, as that would depend on whether a seller of such items has labelled their products and images accordingly to match your description.

Read more
Google Pixel 9 is getting a scam detection upgrade you’ll want on your phone
Google’s Scam Detection for calls on Pixel 9.

Over three months ago, Google started beta testing a new safety feature for Pixel phones that can sense signs of a fraud in voice calls using AI analysis. Today, Google has officially launched the Scam Detection feature for calls, alongside a similar con-screening system for messages.
Every year, smartphone users lose millions of dollars to elaborate schemes across the world. The problem is so rampant that the US Office of Inspector General and the Federal Trade Commission have published guidelines on recognising and reporting such deception.

Hearing calls to flag risks
To look for signs of scam in an ongoing call, Google is pushing the natural language understanding of on-device Gemini Nano AI on Pixel phones. The AI will listen to the ongoing telephonic conversation in  real time, and if it detects a risky pattern, an alert will pop up.

Read more
T-Mobile’s parent company is making an AI Phone with Perplexity
Peplexity on Lock Screen of AI phone.

The year 2025 has seen nearly every smartphone brand tout the virtues of artificial intelligence. But with the exception of Google and its Gemini assistant on Pixel phones, we haven’t seen AI companies making an aggressive hardware push in the segment. That’s about to change.

T-Mobile’s parent company has announced plans for an “AI Phone” that is being developed in partnership with Perplexity. The AI company, which counts Nvidia and Jeff Bezos among its investors, will offer its eponymous AI tool for the phone.

Read more