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The modern version is that Volvo has proposed putting magnets, in the form of nails, into pavements. This is to provide a hint of where the lanes are under snow. It also provides guidance for snowplows. These would probably be driven in by the same machines that stripe lanes. This is an old idea from the early days of automatic driving, but today they'd just be viewed as a hint, not something to be followed blindly.

There are areas where high visibility snow stakes are placed alongside highways for driver and snowplow guidance. Hokkaido puts large downward pointing arrows over snowy highways to mark the shoulder.[1]

Wire guidance systems have been around for years, for industrial robot vehicles. GM put them on their test track for Firebird III in the 1960s. But it's no longer necessary to have even that much infrastructure.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@43.9303297,143.8076743,3a,75y,3...




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