Highway digital twin-enabled Autonomous Maintenance Plant: a perspective

The importance of automating pavement maintenance tasks for highway systems has garnered interest from both industry and academia. Despite significant research efforts and promising demonstrations being devoted to reaching a level of semi-automation featuring digital sensing and inspection, site mai...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Data-Centric Engineering (Online) 2024-01, Vol.5, Article e24
Main Authors: Xu, Jie, Anvo, N’Zebo R., Taha-Abdalgadir, Hussameldin, d’Avigneau, Alix M., Palin, Damian, Wei, Ran, Hadjidemetriou, Georgios, Schaefer, Samuel, de Silva, Lavindra, Al-Tabbaa, Abir, Iida, Fumiya, Brilakis, Ioannis
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Actuation
Algorithms
Artificial intelligence
Automation
autonomous vehicle
Condition monitoring
Control equipment
Cracks
cyber-physical platform
Data processing
Digital twins
Drones
Inspection
inspection automation
Literature reviews
Materials handling
Neural networks
pavement maintenance
Pavements
Real time
Repair
repair automation
road infrastructure
Road maintenance
Roads & highways
Robot control
Robot sensors
Robotics
Robots
Sealing compounds
Unmanned aerial vehicles
Vehicles
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Summary:The importance of automating pavement maintenance tasks for highway systems has garnered interest from both industry and academia. Despite significant research efforts and promising demonstrations being devoted to reaching a level of semi-automation featuring digital sensing and inspection, site maintenance work still requires manual processes using special vehicles and equipment, reflecting a clear gap to transition to fully autonomous maintenance. This paper reviews the current progress in pavement maintenance automation in terms of inspection and repair operations, followed by a discussion of three key technical challenges related to robotic sensing, control, and actuation. To address these challenges, we propose a conceptual solution we term Autonomous Maintenance Plant (AMP), mainly consisting of five modules for sensing, actuation, control, power supply, and mobility. This AMP concept is part of the “Digital Roads” project’s cyber-physical platform where a road digital twin (DT) is created based on its physical counterpart to enable real-time condition monitoring, sensory data processing, maintenance decision making, and repair operation execution. In this platform, the AMP conducts high-resolution survey and autonomous repair operations enabled (instructed) by the road DT. This process is unmanned and completely autonomous with an expectation to create a fully robotized highway pavement maintenance system.
ISSN:2632-6736
2632-6736
DOI:10.1017/dce.2024.34