For the last nine months, the Oregon City Public Works Department has been utilizing AI technology to identify and map out potholes within their jurisdiction. Named CityRover, this device is mounted on their street sweeper to detect any potholes on the road. CityRover captures footage, timestamps, street addresses, and aerial photos of the location where it detects a hole for the city’s reference.
Jayson Thornberg, Street Operations Manager of Oregon City, shared that the street sweeper usually drives every street in the city several times a year, so the device set up daily helps the city spot problem areas more efficiently and quickly. All the pothole data collected by CityRover gets uploaded to a cloud platform which allows public works employees to keep track of new potholes and create more efficient routes to fill them.
John Lewis, Public Works Director of Oregon City, further added that crews often have to replenish 50 to 100 potholes per day. However, the help of CityRover allows the crews to identify and fill more holes in the same amount of time. Chayne Husband, a utility maintenance specialist of 20 years for the city, said he is happy and surprised by the accuracy of the device and how it can distinguish between potholes and manholes without much work from their part.
Oregon City Public Works is currently in the process of testing this technology for the next year or so and possibly make it a permanent fixture. The citizens of Oregon City can also make use of their free MYOC App to report any potholes in the city by providing the necessary details. This app is available in iTunes and Google Playstore.
CityRover is a product of Iteris, a company focussed on smarter, safer and more sustainable transportation. Iteris provides leading edge sensors and analytics solutions to government, transportation, agriculture and other industries. Iteris offers clients far-reaching technologies such as advanced data analytics, computer vision and machine learning to navigate an ever-growing landscape of opportunities.
Jan Holmgren is the Utilities Maintenance Specialist of Oregon City who usually drives the street sweeper with the CityRover camera mounted on it. For the past 20 years, he has been working with the city and thanks to his help, the people of Oregon City can be sure of roads that are maintained regularly and efficiently.
