A Case Western Reserve University start-up has received a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award of nearly $1 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to advance a robotic pavement-marking technology.
RoadPrintz has developed an operator-driven, truck-mounted, mobile robot to replace the dangerous practice of hand-painting stencils of turn arrows, bike symbols, railroad crossings and other common roadway markings.
“We expect our system will reduce injuries and save workers’ lives while increasing labor productivity substantially,” says RoadPrintz co-founder and president Sam Bell.
RoadPrintz will use the NSF funding to further develop the technology, which involves precision vision-based symbol painting, precision mapping, automated creation and use of a database of precision road markings.
“RoadPrintz is on a good trajectory,” says Michael Haag, executive director of Case Western’s Technology Transfer Office, which licensed the technology to RoadPrintz. “The company has leveraged a significant amount of translational resources in just over two years.”
Source: The Daily
