- Customized in-vehicle solution for heavy-duty equipment
- Enhanced driver visual and situational awareness
- Redefined safety as a core value
Facilities that use heavy equipment to process tree material to produce mulch hugely benefit from in-vehicle systems that enable drivers to boost visual and situational awareness. Panoramic view solutions minimize the risk of costly or fatal accidents associated with work sites that involve pedestrian staff and clients, costly assets, and large vehicles maneuvering through precarious spaces. To achieve those goals, a customized Edge AI system was deployed, capable of providing a 360° seamless view of the vehicle surroundings, virtually eliminating all blind spots.
EcoMulch
EcoMulch is a tree-processing and mulching service based in Martinez, California. At their facility, they produce high-quality mulch from re-purposed materials from own tree service, Hamilton Trees, as well as other tree service companies. Producing eco-friendly mulch requires an active work-site that utilizes a fleet of heavy machinery like loaders, grinders and excavators. With a dynamic operation, which at any time might include on-the-ground employees, limited-visibility heavy equipment assets, and visiting clients, safety is of an utmost importance as a split second error could mean injury, death, or costly damage to equipment. To minimize these risks, EcoMulch required an effective solution to achieve their objectives and turn safety into a core value of their business.
Challenges
Heavy Equipment Operator Visibility: Ensuring maximum blind spot elimination for vehicles executing difficult maneuvers through high traffic worksites is key to achieving EcoMulch’s safety goals.
Atypical Calibration: Customized install and camera placement requiring unique mounting is integral to delivering 360° view and eliminating blind spots for atypical vehicles within the EcoMulch fleet.
Debris and Environment: The custom mounted in-vehicle system must also weather the demands of varied outdoor conditions, like rain or falling mulch debris, and withstand the heavy vibrations of vehicle operation.
Solution
VIA Mobile360 M810 with SVS (Surround View System) delivers a panoramic view solution with a custom application tailored to EcoMulch’s needs. Leveraging AI and four FOV-190° camera feeds for SVS with tri-band surround visualization helps vehicle operators meet the everyday challenges of a hazardous work site. Maneuvers once dangerous due to limited line of sight, like reversing, can now be done with confidence, knowing the advanced 3D imaging algorithms ensure sharp and clear panoramic images, giving EcoMulch’s drivers improved situational awareness and virtually eliminating blind spots. With cloud integration, critical warnings can be stored and accessed later on for analysis.
Challenges such as unique vehicle dimension or size are overcome with the VIA Mobile360 M810 system and its ease of customization and rapid deployment, allowing for camera placements that capture the full breadth of vehicles, like extended front-end loaders. EcoMulch was able to integrate brackets for mounting which also serve to protect cameras from falling mulch debris and rain. The ISO-16750-3-rated shock and vibration compliance ensures the VIA Mobile360 M810 will withstand the stress and wear of heavy machinery.
Features
Real-time 360° vision: Vehicle monitoring with in-cab 10-inch screen and seamlessly blended feed from four automotive-grade waterproof cameras.
Customization: The VIA Mobile360 M810 can be customized for the most demanding applications and unique vehicles with rapid utilization. The versatility of the system allows for later Edge AI system updates, like DOD (Dynamic Object Detection), or DMS (Driver Monitoring System).
Cloud Integration: As an AWS IoT Greengrass qualified device, the VIA Mobile360 M810 provides an optimized deployment path to enable AWS cloud services across vehicle fleets, and comes with a comprehensive SDK to facilitate rapid cloud environment development.
Conclusion
Through integrating the compact, durable, and ultra-reliable VIA Mobile360 M810 System into an existing fleet, VIA was able to create an in-vehicle SVS solution tailored to EcoMulch’s specific safety needs.
“You can look at the screen and feel completely safe in the fact that you have a 360 view, front, back and both sides, and it gives you that extra safety,” said Kevin Wentz, EcoMulch Director of Operations. “We’re going to be safe in this yard. No damages and no injuries, and that’s number one for us.”
