Vaisala Extends Year-Round Road Maintenance Efficiency with RoadAI and Vaisala Mobile Detector MD30

Vaisala Extends Year-Round Road Maintenance Efficiency with RoadAI and Vaisala Mobile Detector MD30
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Press Releases

Vaisala
Press Release
June 4, 2019

Vaisala Extends Year-Round Road Maintenance Efficiency with RoadAI and Vaisala Mobile Detector MD30

Vaisala now provides summer and winter data collection along the entire road network for pavement repairs, road state conditions, traffic sign management, and more. 

Vaisala, a global leader in weather, environmental, and industrial measurement, has elaborated on the enhanced capabilities of RoadAI and Vaisala Mobile Detector MD30. Together, these mobile products deliver a powerful and enhanced year-round understanding of road surface state that supplements the information from traditional stationary road weather information systems and modelling. The new mobile solutions use novel sensors to data capture and analysis, including video and images to report the current state of road networks in both summer and winter. This helps to optimize maintenance all year-round.

“RoadAI and MD30 strongly complement one another,” said Markus Melin, Head of Digital Solutions for Transportation, Vaisala. “In the summer, the RoadAI platform captures road video and images; reporting issues like pavement cracks and potholes through computer vision algorithms reliably. In addition, it can be used for traffic sign management. In the winter, MD30 can be connected to RoadAI’s rich video and image platform, allowing review in the office to verify captured road surface state data and enrich the readings with additional analytics,” Melin added. 

MD30 is a novel mobile road condition sensor that transforms any fleet vehicle — from patrol cars even to snow plows in the most demanding conditions — into real-time, mobile road condition data collection points. When coupled with RoadAI, the combination provides year-round, up-to-date road data that is easily accessible over any computer or smartphone and can be leveraged by a wide variety of users, including road authorities and municipal agencies.

Further the data from RoadAI and MD30 are valuable for any connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) developers and technology providers.

The system provides robust intelligence in:
 

  • Summer road pavement condition analysis: RoadAI captures problem areas through video and images to provide decision-makers with the data to prioritize limited resources, effect repairs more efficiently, and save money. The platform is up to four times faster and half the price of traditional pavement condition analysis.
     
  • Winter road maintenance: Crews can keep roads safe and passable by pairing RoadAI with Vaisala’s MD30 mobile sensor to monitor road surface state, changing temperatures, and grip in vehicles. Tested with more than 20 pilot customers last winter, MD30 works with any vehicle, and it is the first such device designed to work reliably in even the extremely harsh conditions of snow plows. MD30 captures and transmits air and road surface temperature/state and friction allowing managers to prioritize their salt, snow, and ice-fighting resources.
     
  • Year-Round traffic sign management: RoadAI can alert crews to downed or damaged signs or to those that are not properly visible. RoadAI also enables authorities to flag problematic signs and supports compliance with local regulations for nighttime visibility.

“There is a need for this kind of comprehensive, year-round solution that not only collects the information but helps decision-makers prioritize issues and work as efficiently as possible along their entire road networks. As we continue to move toward higher levels of automation in vehicles, it’s clear these insights will also be extremely valuable to that nascent market,” said Melin. “Our goal at Vaisala is to empower users with timely, accurate, and critical summer road condition intelligence and winter road state condition data. RoadAI and MD30 data are essential components for building the road condition systems for today's road authorities as well as the vehicles of the future.”

For more information on RoadAI or Vaisala Mobile Detector MD30, please visit vaisala.com/RoadAI or
www.vaisala.com/md30.


More information for media:
Vaisala Media Desk
Tel. +358 20 6198800, [email protected]

Vaisala is a global leader in weather, environmental, and industrial measurement. Building on over 80 years of experience, Vaisala provides observations for a better world. We are a reliable partner for customers around the world, offering a comprehensive range of innovative observation and measurement products and services. Headquartered in Finland, Vaisala employs approximately 1,850 professionals worldwide and is listed on the NASDAQ Helsinki stock exchange.
www.vaisala.com
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