The sustained growth in global road mileage, combined with rising public expectations for improved travel safety and comfort, has created an urgent demand for sensing technologies in road systems. Nevertheless, conventional monitoring methods are increasingly insufficient for modern intelligent roads (IRs), which represent next-generation infrastructure requiring efficient and sustainable sensing solutions. Existing sensor systems that rely on traditional power sources or cabled power supply suffer from inherent limitations, including short operational lifespans and high maintenance costs. At the same time, current road micro-energy harvesting technologies struggle to meet the demands of large-scale distributed sensor networks in IR, underscoring the critical need for self-powered sensing solutions designed for IR. This review identifies the power supply bottleneck inherent in distributed sensor networks of IR, provides a critical comparison of potential solutions with a focus on micro-energy harvesting technologies, and offers a comprehensive review of the practical applications of self-powered sensors (mainly piezoelectric nanogenerators and triboelectric nanogenerators) within road systems. Furthermore, it proposes forward-looking recommendations and developmental prospects for the field, thereby offering theoretical support to advance the large-scale implementation of self-powered sensing in IR systems.
| • | High-performance materials for road systems: It should focus on novel functional composites that exhibit high electro-mechanical conversion efficiency, excellent mechanical durability, and long-term environmental stability, while also exploring feasible pathways for directly endowing sensing and energy harvesting functions into bulk road materials such as asphalt mixture or cement concrete, with the aim of achieving the design objective of sensors possessing a service life equivalent to that of the road infrastructure itself. |
| • | Integration and deployment methods of intelligent microsystems: A highly integrated, self-sustaining intelligent sensing microsystem should be developed, incorporating efficient mechanical energy harvesting, ultra-low power signal processing, and reliable short-/long-range wireless transmission modules. Simultaneously, standardized and modular technologies for large-scale deployment and networking must be established to enable the transition from discrete functional devices to stable and reliable perceptual systems. |
| • | Full life-cycle verification: Comprehensive, full life-cycle performance verification and reliability assessment, which spans from materials and devices to integrated systems, must be conducted to provide robust support for the engineering application and industrial promotion of the technology. |
| 科 Family | 属数 Number of genus | 种数 Number of species | 占总种数比例 Percentage of total species (%) | 属 Genus | 种数 Number of species | 占总种数比例 Percentage of total species (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 鹅膏菌科Amanitaceae | 2 | 11 | 5.26 | 鹅膏菌属 Amanita | 10 | 4.78 |
| 小菇科 Mycenaceae | 2 | 12 | 5.74 | 丝盖伞属 Inocybe | 5 | 2.39 |
| 多孔菌科 Polyporaceae | 8 | 14 | 6.70 | 蜡蘑属 Laccaria | 5 | 2.39 |
| 红菇科 Russulaceae | 3 | 23 | 11.00 | 小皮伞属 Marasmius | 6 | 2.87 |
| 小菇属 Mycena | 11 | 5.26 | ||||
| 光柄菇属 Pluteus | 5 | 2.39 | ||||
| 红菇属 Russula | 17 | 8.13 | ||||
| 栓菌属 Trametes | 5 | 2.39 |