Elgin Sweeper Company and RoadBotics Inc. have partnered to offer Florida’s more than 400 municipalities the ability to collect road condition data during sweeping operations, exclusively using Elgin Sweeper street sweepers. The partnership between the sweeper manufacturer and the road assessment company is designed to help local government officials make data-driven road improvement decisions.
Clean Streets, Improved Roads
According to Mike Higgins, vice president and general manager at Elgin Sweeper, Elgin, IL, the partnership with RoadBotics will enable many of the company’s municipal customers across Florida to receive important data about the conditions of their roads as they sweep.
“Our customers in Florida deploy Elgin Sweeper products year-round to keep their streets clean of debris and sand. These sweepers traverse every road of each municipality on a regular basis. By applying RoadBotics’ technology, we turn each sweeper into a mobile data collection platform that generates a detailed pavement assessment for our customers’ entire road networks,” Higgins said. “Street sweepers have always been essential tools for improving water and air quality, and with the RoadBotics partnership, our sweepers will now also help Florida communities improve the streets themselves.”
Mark DeSantis, RoadBotics’ CEO, described the partnership with Elgin Sweeper as a major step forward in public infrastructure management, adding that the technology is in use by more than 100 local governments.
“Typically, a municipality needs to wait for our team of technicians to arrive in their community to complete data collection. Now, a municipality can become a subscriber of our technology and conduct a pavement assessment immediately using Elgin Sweeper’s fleet of street sweepers,” DeSantis said. “With this partnership, Elgin Sweeper’s products will keep streets clean while simultaneously providing city officials with critical data about the conditions of their roads and infrastructure. It’s a win-win.”
Windshield-mounted App
RoadBotics’ pavement assessment technology works by mounting a smartphone to the windshield of a vehicle – in this case, a street sweeper. The smartphone collects images of the road surface using the company’s proprietary RoadSense app as the vehicle travels the roads.
DeSantis said the data is then analyzed “using cutting-edge machine-learning technology,” which identifies pavement damage such as potholes and cracks. The result is a detailed, meter-by-meter pavement assessment of the city’s entire road network. He says government public works officials can then use the data to prioritize pavement maintenance in their community.
“Elgin Sweeper is committed to getting smart city technology, like RoadBotics, into the hands of our municipal customers in Florida – to help them achieve their mission to provide safe roads for their residents,” Higgins said. “We will be leveraging the knowledge and expertise of Environmental Products Group, our local dealer, to execute this initiative. Roll-out to the broader United States is expected to follow initial deployment to Florida.”
“With Elgin Sweeper’s products collecting data while sweeping, more municipalities will have a transparent view into the condition of their roads, and in the future, much more of their infrastructure,” DeSantis said. “Such transparency represents a revolution in the way we are able to provide safer roads and infrastructure for millions of people each day. It’s an ambitious goal, but Elgin Sweeper is the ideal partner to make it a reality.”
