SBIR Phase II: A Non-invasive Screening Tool to Detect Overweight Trucks on Roads in Real Time

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。这个小型企业创新研究第二阶段项目的重点是检测和威慑道路上的超重车辆。这项技术正在开发一种实用、经济、可靠、不干扰交通流量的实时筛查工具。超重的商用车是国家道路和桥梁破败的重要原因，因为道路表面的损坏随着相对载荷的增加而大幅增加，例如，一辆80,000磅的卡车造成的道路损坏是比卡车轻20倍的轿车的数千倍。如果不广泛解决这一问题，任何翻新或建造新基础设施的努力都将受到阻碍。美国近71%的货运-相当于2017年7003亿美元的经济活动-通过卡车运输。此外，超重卡车也是一个重大的安全风险。超重降低了大型车辆的机动性，并导致卡车的机械部件容易发生故障，进而经常导致撞车，造成重大的人员和经济损失，特别是在装载危险的情况下。该项目的智能优点是有效和可靠地测量车辆的重量，并在不干扰交通流量或路面完整性的情况下一致地检测超重卡车。拟议的全自动化系统是一种颠覆性技术，它是一种非侵入性的技术，使用一种新颖的、超高空间分辨率的光电系统从远处推断车辆的重量。该产品是一款用户友好的移动应用程序，可以实时向订户(政府机构或私营部门的公司)显示相关车辆的重量。拟议的系统是一个物联网系统，结合了专有光电系统、算法、信号处理、人工智能和深度学习、系统设计和集成。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project focuses on the detection and deterrence of overweight vehicles on roads. This technology is developing a practical, economical, and reliable real-time screening tool that does not interfere with traffic flow. Overweight commercial vehicles are a significant contributor to the nation's crumbling roads and bridges because the damage to a road surface increases substantially with the relative load, e.g., the road damage caused by an 80,000-pound truck is thousands of times that of a car which is twenty times lighter than the truck. Any efforts to renovate or build new infrastructures will be hindered without addressing this issue broadly. Nearly 71% of U.S freight ― representing $700.3 billion in economic activity in 2017 ― moves via trucks. Also, overweight trucks are a significant safety risk. Being overweight reduces the maneuverability of the massive vehicle and causes the truck's mechanical components to be prone to failure, which in turn often causes crashes, with significant human and economic tolls, especially if the load is hazardous. The intellectual merit of this project is to effectively and reliably measure the weight of a vehicle and consistently detect overweight trucks without interfering with the traffic flow or the integrity of the pavement. The proposed fully-automated system is a disruptive technology that is non-intrusive and infers the weight of vehicles from a distance using a novel, ultra-high-spatial-resolution, electro-optical system. The product is a user-friendly mobile application that displays to subscribers (government agencies or firms in the private sector) the weight of the relevant vehicle in real time. The proposed system is an internet-of-things system, a combination of proprietary electro-optical system, algorithms, signal processing, artificial intelligence and deep learning, system design and integration.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.