Title: Operator controlled, vehicle-based highway crack-sealing machine

Authors: S.A. Velinsky, X. Feng, D.A. Bennett

Addresses: Advanced Highway Maintenance & Construction Technology Research Center, Department of Mechanical & Aeronautical Engineering, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA. Advanced Highway Maintenance & Construction Technology Research Center, Department of Mechanical & Aeronautical Engineering, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA. Advanced Highway Maintenance & Construction Technology Research Center, Department of Mechanical & Aeronautical Engineering, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA

Abstract: This paper presents a new heavy vehicle system developed for the automated sealing of cracks in highway pavement. The machine has been developed based on the authors| experience over the last twelve years building such machines. A special sealant applicator that deploys a pressurised reservoir was developed to allow for high-speed, automated sealing operations. A telescoping long-reach robotic arm was developed, which can position the sealing head mounted to its end in a 3.65 m (12 ft) by 4 m (13 ft) large workspace within 0.4 mm (1/64 in) at a traverse speed up to 1 m/s (3 ft/s). To ensure adequate sealant flow, a special electrically heated hose was developed. A control network of both fast 100 Mbps Ethernet and 10 Mbps Wireless allows for distributed real-time motion control, I/O control and machine vision. A fully object-oriented, multi-threaded and Internet-based software architecture allows reliable and efficient system integration and provides an interactive and responsive user interface for feature-rich and easy imaging, path planning and system control. An operator-assisted crack identification method is used and the path planning method is based on simulated annealing in order to optimally seal a network of cracks.

Keywords: crack-sealing machine; crack sealing; highway repairs; pavement cracks; vehicle-based crack-sealing machine.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHVS.2003.003204

International Journal of Heavy Vehicle Systems, 2003 Vol.10 No.3, pp.145 - 166

Published online: 24 Jul 2003 *

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