Sound transportation infrastructure is critical for economic development and sustainability. Pavement condition is a primary concern among agencies of the roadway infrastructure. Automation has become possible in recent years on collecting data and producing results for certain aspects of pavement performance, while challenges remain in several other categories, such as automated cracking survey. This paper reviews the technological advances on automated survey of pavements, and discusses the most recent breakthroughs by the team led by the author in using 3D laser imaging for capturing 1 mm surface images of pavements.