Artificial Intelligence in winter road maintenance: ASSIST System

Date and Time: Tuesday, May 9, 2023: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Location: Keck 100

 

Lead Presenter:  enzo giletta, Managing Director
Affiliation:  GILETTA SPA - BUCHER MUNICIPAL
Social Media Handle:  @enzogiletta

Lead Presenter Biography

I'm Enzo Giletta, I was born in Saluzzo (Italy) in 1960.
I have graduated in Mechanical Engineering.
I'm the Managing Director of company Giletta Spa in Italy and company Bucher Municipal Wernberg GmbH in Germany.
These are two companies producing spreades, plows, blowers and systems for WRM.
I'm Convenor of the CEN TC337 WG3 for municipal vehicles, Project leader of WG1 for Spreaders in the European Standardization Agency.
I'm Vice President of the Italian committee in PIARC for winter and maintenance.
I'm member of the technical committee in EUnited (European industrial association) for winter road maintenance vehicles technologies. 

Co-Authors

Presentation Description 

In the last 20 years all experts worldwide defined the best practices for deicing and snow clearing parameters (salt and brine dosage, plow pressure, etc) to be used to rise up the level of service respecting environment and infrastructures.
This require the operator to intelligently manage the spreader, adjusting dosage, asymmetry, spread width, solid/liquid dosage, etc.
But at the same time, two factors make WRM operations even more difficult, due to the cost cutting, the driver is alone in the cab having to drive and control the equipment and more and more it's difficult to find trained and experienced drivers, so that in many cases those who carry out winter maintenance are not experienced and do not know the route and the quality of salt to spread, creating problems for the environment, ground water, road infrastructure (bridges) and increasing the costs of the service.
With the advent of Digital and later Machine Learning, the general industry has been benefited from it for several years, while winter road services have remained almost unchanged compared to previous decades.
Thanks to a tender launched in 2015 by European Space Agency, we have designed a system called ASSIST, which is able to process all data coming from road infrastructure and mobile sensors. It defines the best working parameters sending them directly to the spreaders/plows, allowing to be precise in each sector of the road to maintain, and leaving the driver the only function to drive the vehicles safely.

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