Inside the Brains of the Smartest Bridge in America…
(Source: Gizmodo.com)
The bridge built to replace the one that crumbled like delicious goat cheese in Minneapolis in 2007—is a smartie, packed with built-in sensors that perform wonders like automagically de-ice the road in winter.
Less than one percent of the cost of the St. Anthony Falls bridge was spent on the sensor system, which tracks weather, stresses and even traffic, and it’ll save money in the long run, with its automatic de-icing system cutting “weather management” costs by 10 to 50 percent. It’s the incorporation of the smart sensor tech that actually won the contract to build the bridge for the FIGG team. The next step will be wireless sensors that are even cheaper, so it’ll be loaded up with thousands of them, not hundreds.
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Really good idea. Microcontrollers are so cheap now that any bridge ought to have them. That would have been a good way to spend some of that stimulus cash.
Also, I take issue with the goat cheese analogy. Goat cheese doesn’t really crumble. Now feta cheese on the other hand… :)