A stretch of motorway between Graz, Austria, and the Slovenian border became the test bed recently for a trial of autonomous construction vehicles that can lay asphalt and recognise objects.
The technology was being tested during refurbishment works along the stretch of the A9 motorway by Strabag and its partners in the EU-wide research project, InfraROB.
The aim of the innovative technology is to help improve the safety, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of road construction and maintenance works in the long term.
For the past three years, a total of 15 companies and research institutes from eight different countries have been working on five InfraROB subprojects under the leadership of the University of Vigo, Spain.
A fully autonomous paver laid the asphalt on the 180-metre-long trial section near Spielfeld – completely automatically, with implementation and logistics coordinated by a Strabag team from Graz. Road operator and InfraROB partner ASFINAG provided the trial section.
According to the team, the automatic control system that has now been developed had been the missing piece for fully autonomous asphalt paving. Such automation could improve occupational health and safety on road construction sites in the long term, the team claim.
Sebastian Czaja, head of TPA Group PSS (Process Stability in Road Construction), said: “In the future, paving staff will increasingly be performing the task of controller. They will be able to work at a greater distance from moving traffic, keeping them less exposed to vapours and aerosols during the paving process.”
MOBA (Mobile Automation) AG developed a special module for the autonomous control of the machinery that is connected directly to the digital CAN bus interface of the asphalt paver and feeds the machine with the target data for the paving section.
Object recognition sensors and satellite navigation (GNSS) keep the paver dynamically on the right course during paving. A second innovation from InfraROB Subproject 1 is a newly developed paver attachment that was used to successfully integrate a sensor-equipped fibre optic cable (FOS cable) directly into the surface course during asphalt paving.
The installed temperature and movement sensors further provide information about the load on the asphalt surface during use. In the future, this data can be used for the monitoring of road maintenance works.
Kristina Wittmann, road superstructure expert at Austrian motorway operator, ASFINAG, said: “The importance and future of InfraROB automation technology is enormous from a user perspective. These technologies not only reduce the physical strain on workers, reducing the risk of workplace accidents, they also continuously record important parameters for quality assurance, which are of particular interest to road operators.”
Image credit: Copyright © STRABAG
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