Britain's crumbling roads could be fixed by robots capable of filling in a pothole in a minute, scientists have predicted. An army of autonomous road vehicles or drones could one day be prowling around towns and cities identifying cracks in roads and pavements before a pothole develops. In just one minute, a robot with an attached 3D printer will be able to spray asphalt into a crack in the road to repair it. And the robots will even work anti-social hours, completing their work at night to ensure roads to not have to be closed down during the day. Leeds City Council is already working with a team of engineers and designers to pioneer the concept of'self-repairing cities'.

Europe continues to be among the leaders in developing ground vehicles capable of real-time vision. At Bundeswehr University Munich (UniBwM), researchers are investigating "scout-type" vision for autonomous cars, which--unlike popular systems in use now--does not rely on accurate maps, GPS positioning, or databases of previously observed objects.