Roadscanners: Next-generation care of traffic system

Roadscanners, a Rovaniemi-based multinational company specialised in developing tools and services for traffic infrastructure asset management, is celebrating its 20th founding anniversary this year.

Company sources said, focused on structural and functional condition of roads, railroads, bridges, and airports, Roadscanners has already expanded its operations to more than 60 countries across the globe.

Its key expertise is in developing the use of new digital electromagnetic non-destructive methods such as ground penetrating radar (GPR), laser scanner, accelerometer, and HD and thermal camera linked with GPS in monitoring and diagnostics of the infrastructure of all transport systems including roads, railroads, bridges, and airports.

“We have managed also to become a global player, and we have customers and products about 60 countries in every continent,” Roadscanners Group CEO Timo Saarenketo told the Daily Finland.

According to Saarenketo, Roadscanners has been most successful in the last 20 years of its operations. It has been growing annually on average at 15 per cent a year and, at the same time, has been investing in its research and development activities also at a 15 per cent rate every year. Roadscanners has proved profitable almost always since its inception in 1998. It has also achieved an exemplary success in exporting services and goods, with the export revenue accounting for 40 to 60 per cent of the annual turnover.

Roadscanners has been cooperating with the city of Rovaniemi from the very beginning of its coming into operation, said Saarenketo. “The street network in the city has been Roadscanners’ test platform since 2000, when the first Street Doctor analyses for the functional and structural conditions of the street network were made. Thanks to this monitoring programme, Rovaniemi has been able to make sustainable investments to strengthen its street network in most productive way. The city has also been an excellent reference project of Roadscanners for its export destinations,” said the company CEO.

He said Roadscanners has been relentlessly working to be one of the leading companies and pathfinders providing software, instruments and consulting services in the area of traffic infrastructure asset management. “Roadscanners will also focus in the future on ITS and in infrastructure challenges that will be faced due to autonomous driving, because these cars do not fly yet and they need a good quality roads and streets also in the future.”

Talking to the Daily Finland, Roadscanners Customer Operations Manager Virpi Halttu explained in details about the company’s flagship product the Road Doctor system, a shortened name of the Road Doctor Survey Van (RDSV) which is a complete system for road condition survey and analyses. RDSV unites the unique and innovative system in a single affordable easy to use plug and play high tech system. Focused on maintenance planning, the Road Clinic Road Doctor Survey Van benefits its clients with high quality multi-faceted non-destructive data collection in a single pass major savings on traffic infrastructure management, savings as high as 40 per cent on infrastructure costs.

“Roadscanners has been developing the Road Doctor software for the last 20 years. It is the world leader software for analyses of road, railroad, bridge etc. The software is able to analyse the data collected from the surface and the sub-surface so that you are, for example, able to locate the week sections of the road. It combines, synchronises and visualises the data from several sources enabling a multidata analysis,” said Halttu.

Pointing out the Roadscanners’ specialty in developing and providing tools and services for traffic infrastructure asset management, she said, “With our products and services you are able to identify the weak sections of a road that need to be fixed instead of fixing the whole road. This saves a lot of money through proactive maintenance. This means that problems are fixed at a very early stage, and the fixing is light and costs less money. The Roadscanners’ approach is to fix the root causes of the problems, not only treat the symptoms.”

Among the other widely popular and efficient Roadscanners products include Road Doctor CamLink (RDCL), which is a system for capturing videos linked to GPS data that offers data on pavement damage; Road Doctor Thermal Diagnostics (RDTD) designed especially for IR investigations of transport infrastructure; Road Doctor Laser Scanner (RDLS), a system for cost effective laser scanning and laser scanner data-based analysis of roads and railways; and Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) with structure thickness and quality that provides detailed information on structural anomalies and other important factors like the moisture content of the transport infrastructure.

Established in 1998, the company has 30 persons working in Finland. The company also provides consulting services, hardware systems, and software, said Halttu. “Roadscanners uses the monitoring and analysis results to produce precise and economically sustainable rehabilitation designs and plans. The key to this process is Roadscanners’ developments and expertise in high tech non-destructive survey equipment. We use a combination of ground penetrating radar, laser scanner, accelerometer, HD and thermal camera linked together with GPS to make a complete picture of the infrastructure,” she added.

Roadscanners’ head office is in Rovaniemi, but it also has consulting offices in Tampere and Helsinki in Finland. Outside of Finland, “The group also has four subsidiaries, Roadscanners Sweden AB located in Borlänge, Sweden; Roadscanners Central Europe s.r.o located in Prague, Czech Republic; Roadscanners Norway AS in Kirkenes, Norway; and Roadscanners USA Inc, in Delaware, USA,” said Halttu.

Roadscanners believes, in the future, proactive maintenance policies that react to the early phase symptoms and fix the root causes of the problems will play a key role in the next generation road asset management, said Halttu, adding that the company has also started to focus on the area of intelligent transport system.