Automotive Engineering - December 2023 - 29

AV SENSORS FEATURE
Pothole detectives
Vehicles traveling repeated routes are data-gatherers for Aisin's Road Maintenance
Solution (ARMS) technology, ready for beta testing in the U.S.
The first North American business-to-government
technology initiative for Aisin's Connected & Sharing
Solutions Division is expected to begin beta testing in
late 2023 or early 2024. " ARMS (Aisin Road
Maintenance Solution) technology is a system that can
identify potholes and other road problems, then communicate
those issues from the vehicle to the cloud in
real time, " Scott Turpin, president and CEO of Aisin
World Corp of America, said in an SAE Media interview
during the 2023 North American International Auto
Show in Detroit.
Vehicles that are routinely driven on the same roads
within a community are well-suited for ARMS application.
" Garbage trucks, buses, snowplows and other
vehicles that run similar routes on a regular basis present
a way to capture road data that can then be accessed
in the cloud by a municipality, " said Cam Danh,
Assistant Manager, Business Design Group of Aisin's
Connected & Sharing Solutions Division.
A vehicle equipped with a high-definition camera
and an edge computer is required hardware for ARMS.
Aisin's location-based services platform, which relies
on machine learning and algorithms, enables the pinpointing
of a road issue. Initial data processing occurs
via the onboard edge computer with additional analysis
in the cloud. Edge computing is an information architecture
that brings the computing resource closer
to the source of data.
The ARMS system can detect the depth of potholes,
various types of road cracks and road roughness.
" Digitalization of the collected data means a municipality
ARMS presents detailed information about road conditions that will enable
municipality officials to fix potholes and other road issues.
will have a library of road information,
including historical reference points, "
Danh said. The collection of road data will
occur year-round, as the ARMS-equipped
vehicles in a municipality program are
driven daily or weekly.
Aisin developed and first deployed
ARMS in Japan, so the technology's
artificial intelligence (AI) model had to
be trained for North American applications.
" Japanese roads have different
characteristics from roads in North
America. If we applied the same AI
model that was developed in Japan to
the U.S., there would be a lot of false
positives, or incorrect characterizations, "
said Danh. Road differences between
Japan and the U.S. include lane widths and unique manholecover
designs.
Training the AI model for North America use has taken more than
Aisin's Kevin Smith, left, and
Cam Danh work at the Aisin
Technical Center of America
in Plano, Texas.
Aisin's Scott Turpin said
that ARMS is a connectivity
technology that emphasizes
road safety
two years, according to Kevin Smith, Senior Manager, Business
Development Department of Aisin's Connected & Sharing Solutions
Division. " It's important to make sure that we have the most accurate
AI model possible, so we've accumulated thousands of miles driving
around Texas and Michigan training the model, which gets more accurate
with more training, " Smith said.
Kami Buchholz
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
December 2023 29
ALL IMAGES: AISIN
Automotive Engineering - December 2023

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