Narrator: This is Science Today. A prototype of a moving, high-speed, radar-equipped bridge inspector called HERMES, has been successfully giving engineers accurate diagnostic information about the state of roadway concrete and bridge decks. Jose Hernandez, a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who helped designed HERMES, says it won't be long before a series of states in the country will build a second prototype to improve the system.

Hernandez: Make it more robust and try to get it closer to an engineering prototype that could then be transferred to the commercial sector.

Narrator: The efficient HERMES system poses to revolutionize the costly, time-consuming way infrastructure are currently inspected.

Hernandez: I believe that it's a matter of time before this kind of technology would be the way of inspecting and maintaining our infrastructure and the time will come when they'll be so many of them out there. I mean, it will be a common thing and the states will all have a fleet of these things. And not only would they be used for inspecting bridge decks, but roads.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.