A traffic cone that rolls out of the emergency vehicle alone, is placed in position and forms a safety perimeter before any operator has set foot on the asphalt. It is not a scene that we usually see in our parts, but the truth is that in China they are already testing it and its operation is tremendously interesting.
What is happening. Emergency teams in China are testing autonomous traffic cones capable of securing the perimeter of an accident in less than ten seconds. Such as describe Marc Theermann, director of strategy at Boston Dynamics, in a post on LinkedIn, these robots leave directly from the emergency vehicle and move alone to their position, forming a safety barrier without any operator having to cross the road. They can be activated remotely or operate completely autonomously.
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The hook: the safety of the operators. Placing cones by hand on a road with active traffic is a truly dangerous task for operators in charge of road maintenance, or those carrying out work on the road. The idea with this technology is simply to eliminate or reduce as much as possible the human presence in the most vulnerable phase of any road intervention.
How they work. Researchers from the Center for Research in Technologies, Energy and Industrial Processes of Pontevedra (CINTECX) published a study in 2025 in the magazine Infrastructures that described the design and validation of its “Remotely Piloted Safety Cone”, a robotic system with a similar architecture.
The device combines autonomous GPS navigation with RTK correction (a high-precision positioning system), odometry sensors, an inertial measurement unit and ultrasonic obstacle detection. All of this managed by an autopilot and an on-board computer that coordinates movement in real time.
The results of the study showed that the most precise configuration managed to stay less than 20 centimeters from the planned route, a more than acceptable margin for this type of operations.
Faster than by hand. According to that same studythe estimated placement time per cone with this system is around three seconds, compared to the seven or eight seconds it takes on average for a human operator. In an intervention that requires dozens of cones, the difference is quite significant, especially if this is then combined with systems that can be placed simultaneously and not one after another.
And also at night. Best of all, the task can also make it much easier to place cones when there is barely any visibility. And the robotic cones incorporate lighting, something basic for any type of emergency road signage.
In Spain we already propose the “less intelligent” version. After the V16 beaconswhich have given a lot to talk about (more for the bad which for the good), the DGT has also explored the use of connected coneswhich would be responsible for notifying in real time of road works or dangers. They would be integrated into the DGT 3.0 platformalong with the V16 beacon, although they are still in the testing phase and very far from implementation. The main difference, as you might expect, is that these cones do not move or position themselves. But it’s already a step.
What comes next. The natural step of this technology is not the individual cone, but rather several can be coordinated at the same time, something that we have already seen in tests in China, and that the deployment is reminiscent of that of the drone shows in the sky (less glamorous, but just as addictive to watch). The researchers they point in his study of multi-agent swarms, several robots working together in a coordinated manner, such as the evolution of this technology to apply it in infrastructures.
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