Asset Vision brings innovation to the world of road maintenance
Australian-owned company Asset Vision has taken its intelligent transport asset management platform to a new level using artificial intelligence and machine learning. Roads & Infrastructure looks at what this means for road authorities, councils and contractors in charge of road maintenance.
Road maintenance, though essential for commuter safety, is an arduous task for those involved in the process. For the inspection crew, it often means long hours of driving along regional, state and national roads looking for potholes or broken sign boards along the way. This increases the risk of accidents as inspectors have to get in and out of their vehicle next to moving traffic to record any defects they encounter.
That scenario could be changing soon with widespread roll out of an Australian- owned road maintenance technology that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to facilitate such inspections from the safety of a vehicle.
The EaglEye artificial intelligence software, which was acquired recently by Asset Vision, can be used by road maintenance teams to map and assess road sections in a fraction of the time compared to traditional methods.
The software uses footage captured by vehicle-mounted cameras to automatically detect, categorise and assess the condition of road assets, including signs, line marking, trees, and safety barriers, as well as the road surface itself. This means inspectors no longer need to leave their vehicles. Instead, they can travel at the speed of the traffic, resulting in significant improvements in safety and productivity gains.
The innovative technology has already been embraced by the Victorian State Government as well as a number of contractors and road operators in Australia, New Zealand and internationally.
Victoria’s Department of Transport (DoT) recently completed a trial of Asset Vision’s AI-integrated software to map and assess the condition of more than 4000 kilometres of roads and roadside assets in Victoria’s north-east region.
Using this ground-breaking software, the DoT, Regional Roads Victoria (RRV) and their alliance partner DM Roads assessed the condition of more than 160,000 individual road assets across thousands of kilometres of road sections in a matter of weeks. The same job would have taken around three years using traditional methods.
“This technology is allowing us to work more efficiently and safely – it removes the need for workers to be out on the roads putting themselves in potentially risky situations,” Victoria’s Minister for Roads and Road Safety Ben Carroll said in a statement.
As Steve Bowmaker, RRV’s Regional Director for the Hume Region explains, “We’ve been using AI [technology] in the region to gather critical information about our asset base. It’s a really rapid information acquisition task, that we can now do in hours and days, not weeks and months.
“We use the critical video footage [from EaglEye] to pick up all of the assets along the section of the network. That could be anything from a road sign to road markings, the condition of the road itself and other items of roadside furniture such as wire rope safety barriers,” he adds.
In fact, adoption of AI technology on Victoria’s road network has been widely recognised for its innovative approach. DoT Victoria was recently a finalist for the prestigious Gartner Eye on Innovation Awards for Government 2021, an award that recognises government organisation initiatives that make innovative use of data and emerging technologies.
EagleSoft acquisition, a natural progression in Asset Vision’s evolution
Asset Vision was built from the ground up and launched in 2010. It was the culmination of a decade of experience and lessons learnt consulting with road maintenance contractors across Australia, who sought to digitise their field workers and move away from pen and paper processes. Asset Vision landed its first major client in 2012 after winning a competitive tender from the Victorian Department of Transport (formerly VicRoads) for an asset maintenance management system.
The brainchild of Co-Founder and CEO Damian Smith, the Asset Vision Software as a Service (SaaS) platform is accessible through a web browser, and an offline- enabled app on iOS and Android devices. It is designed to enable asset owners, contractors and sub-contractors to easily handle different aspects of road related asset maintenance together. The all-in-one, smart platform connects all parties and has everything from field inspections and defect capture to asset inventory, work order management, resource planning and consumption, and maintaining compliance KPIs.
The Asset Vision coPilot product allows for road inspections to be undertaken without the inspectors having to take their hands off the wheel or stopping the vehicle. This is achieved by the inspector’s smartphone being mounted to the dashboard or windscreen with its camera facing the road, and a battery powered Bluetooth smart button attached to the steering wheel.
When the inspector notices a defect they press the button, which triggers the Asset Vision app to capture a burst of photos along with the current GPS location which attaches the defect to the correct asset. It then also listens for voice narration from the inspector for keywords to classify the defect and then records any additional comments as text.
“Asset Vision coPilot was a step towards making inspections safer and more efficient for road inspectors. We have had universally positive feedback from our clients, particularly from inspectors frequently travelling on precarious, winding roads on the side of mountains where there is nowhere to pull over safely,” says Smith.
To further this vision, in July 2021 Asset Vision completed the acquisition of EagleSoft – an Australian provider of an Intelligent Data Capture technology [EaglEye] that automatically detects both road defects and asset inventory through video footage and AI.
With EaglEye, vehicle-mounted cameras capture video as the inspector drives along a road. The video is then uploaded to a cloud environment where it is analysed using AI and machine learning to detect road defects, from simple cracking to potholes. Roadside assets such as pits, wire rope barriers and signage can also be recognised, and all data can be readily shared/integrated with Asset Vision or other applications as needed.
The future of transport asset management
According to Smith, what the EagleSoft acquisition means for Asset Vision’s existing and future customers is access to an even more efficient and cost-effective tool for analysing road conditions, while providing higher levels of safety for maintenance crews.
“This is going to be a real game changer,” says Smith.
“With Asset Vision, our goal has always been to help deliver a safer and more efficient road network by minimising person-vehicle interaction. With the help of EagleSoft’s AI technology, we are taking Asset Vision to the next level. This is a one- of-a-kind technology for road maintenance, not just in Australia, but globally, and we expect it will drastically improve the way roads in the country are assessed and maintained to the level expected by road users and the community.”
Chris Wignall, Asset Vision’s Head of Sales, says by using the Asset Vision platform, contractors, road authorities and councils find it easy to report on compliance and manage their work schedules.
“In our conversations with clients we’ve been told that using our new AI data capture approach alongside Asset Vision’s platform has made it easier for them to identify sections of road that require urgent repair, allowing them to allocate funding and resources where it is needed most to keep the roads safer.”
With ‘flexibility’ one of the core pillars on which the Asset Vision platform has been built, the company recognises that maintenance of a road network also includes related asset classes, and that every client has unique needs.
“Early on in our story we began with roads, but we have since broadened our scope to include all the asset classes associated with modern roads; including bridges, drainage, tunnels, smart signs, Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and so forth. Some of our local government clients who started managing only roads using our technology have now also extended its use to other council assets like open spaces and facilities,” says Smith.
“We are also currently implementing Asset Vision to manage ferries for Transport for NSW in Sydney. We will soon go live supporting the maintenance of a major Australian airport and we also have a fair bit of interest in managing rail.”
Asset Vision also holds contracts with toll road operators in the US and New Zealand. Smith says the team is working hard to expand its Australian and global footprint and further build out the capabilities of the platform.
“Given we aren’t new to the game, our platform is quite mature in its functionality, so what we’re seeing now are opportunities to work with clients to expand into areas for efficiency gains and enhance their overall physical safety when working out on the roads,” says Smith.
“As more clients come on board in Australia and internationally, we always take the time to work closely with their field teams and if there’s a way we can enhance or fine tune our platform to help to keep them safe, we’ll find a way to make that happen.”
This article was originally published in the February edition of our magazine. To read the magazine, click here.
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