Climate change, tight budgets and increasing traffic are making it hard to keep roads damage-free. Now technology is being used to find sustainable ways to tackle the problem.

The Hertfordshire town of Potters Bar, in the commuter belt just north of London, isn’t the sort of place you would expect to come across robot technology being tested that could help solve a problem plaguing urban infrastructure across the world. Earlier this year, however, it hosted trials of an autonomous road-mending vehicle, which could soon be patrolling city streets and finding and fixing defects before they develop into potentially lethal fissures.

The state of British roads was mentioned in all party manifestos at this year’s general election, reflecting how preoccupied the public is with it. Pothole fury came to the fore in local elections earlier in the year and is a perennial topic on neighbourhood Facebook groups.

Looking beyond UK borders, it’s clear that potholes is one of the rare topics that unites...