Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development
Transport: Developed intelligent system to manage heavy vehicles safety
An innovative transportation system to manage heavy vehicles safety on roads, motorways, bridges and viaducts was developed and tested at the ENEA Trisaia Research Center (Matera), as part of the project SENTINEL[1] . Coordinated by ENEA, jointly with the Consortium TRAIN, it allows to identify in real time overloaded vehicles, finding alternative routes to avoid dangerous situations.
Equipped with advanced dynamic weighing systems, hi-tech sensors, innovative software and hardware, SENTINEL allows data acquisition to verify the actual wear of the infrastructures and accurate, dynamic and real-time measurements of the weight of the vehicle regardless of its speed and trajectory. Moreover, it has decision support systems capable of automatically signaling the actions to be taken to avoid risks such as blocking or vehicle deviation. Before its installation on the final site, this 'intelligent' system was tested by a multidisciplinary team of researchers from the Trisaia Research Center partnership.
"In this context it will also be useful to monitor the state of wear of the infrastructures and plan maintenance interventions", pointed out Piero De Fazio, Head of the Section Tools for Energy Applications at ENEA and scientific coordinator of the project, "in line with the recent regulations on transport, which pay particular attention to the maximum weights of vehicles authorized to circulate on the national and international road network ".
Specifically, the prototype will consist of a weighing system with a mechanical part, equipped with sensors, that will deform as vehicles passAt the end of the project, in collaboration with ANAS, SENTINEL will be installed on the A2 motorway, between km 0 (Fisciano, province of Salerno) and km 7 (Salerno), and in the future on other nodes of the road network that are deemed critical because of their altimetric, environmental or climatic characteristics.; a software which, having received the deformation signal of the mechanical element, will translate it into weight through algorithms; a device to classify and measure the speed of the vehicle; a software to integrate with Intelligence Transport Systems and the various smart roads of the road operator.
At the end of the project, in collaboration with ANAS, SENTINEL will be installed on the A2 motorway, between km 0 (Fisciano, province of Salerno) and km 7 (Salerno), and in the future on other nodes of the road network that are deemed critical because of their altimetric, environmental or climatic characteristics.
