Inside the Brains of the Smartest Bridge in America…

February 21, 2009 at 12:47 am

(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.

To read the entire article, click here.