28 Dec RMV Introductory
Pioneer Industrial Systems a family owned engineering company in NW Ohio has developed and built a Robotic Maintenance Vehicle taking our expertise in industry to the highway. Our patent pending RMV is designed with safety, efficiency, and quality in mind. We aim to improve highway maintenance and construction safety by taking the operator off the road and putting him or her in a safer environment, inside the cab of a truck. We improve efficiency through automation and robotics by taking the heavy burden tasks of walking behind a truck and putting it in the hands of a robot. We can improve quality by applying advanced vision with the robot to produce a consistent, accurate, and repeatable process.
The RMV is a modular solution. This allows the base truck, generator, robot, and vision system to perform various highway maintenance tasks with a single operator. Changing operations is as easy as swapping modules and calling up the corresponding robot program. It is like playing a different video game using the same controller and TV. You only buy the base unit once, but it offers unlimited potential from a programming standpoint. We have identified over a dozen modules that could be used for highway maintenance.
Our first module to hit the road is the Cone Module. This module uses the Fanuc Robot to automatically place standard traffic cones, grabber cones, or barrels at an equally spaced distance or pattern depending on the parameters selected from inside the cab. The cones can be magazine or pallet fed to the robot for automatic placing. For picking cones we employ Fanuc’s IrVision and line tracking, an industry standard, for finding the cones translating their position to the robot, allowing the robot to reach out and pick up the cone while moving down the highway with no operator exposed to oncoming, distracted drivers on the highway.
The next module currently being tested is our Crack Sealing Module. There is an Air Blowoff Module attached to the front of the RMV prepares the surface prior to sealing by blowing out any debris and moisture. The Crack Sealing Module uses the Advance Vision Module to find, measure, and locate the cracks. This data is then processed through an industrial PC which then uses AI or algorithms to filters the cracks, optimize the crack patterns, and creates the robot path and speed to efficiently fill each crack with the correct volume of material.
You can learn more about our RMV, the current modules available, and the additional modules underdevelopment by
- visiting our RMV page at http://www.pioneerindsys.com/rmv
- checking out our YouTube channel at: https://youtu.be/TgJg7wmUU1I
- contacting us for further information at: sales@pis.us
- or scheduling an onsite demonstration by calling: 419-737-9506