News: The First SCANNER / GPR vehicle in the world

June 2005
In partnership with Roadware DCL, Aperio have integrated the latest GPR technology into the ARAN survey vehicle, providing a powerful combination of surface and subsurface information.

The Scanner vehicle will deliver the condition information that local authorities require to report the Best Value indicators to the BVP223 standard and will be used throughout England and Wales. The vehicle is the most technologically advanced of its type and the combination of geo-spatially referenced video and laser technology to measure surface defects with Ground Penetrating Radar to scan the subsurface will provide highway engineers with a powerful resource. The solution will bring clients economic benefits due to increased efficiency and technical benefits due to the synchronised collection of surface and subsurface information which will remove the possibility of positioning errors.

This is the first ARAN to be built to meet the UK's TTS specification issued in July 2003. However, the ARAN has a long history, the first ARAN (Automatic Road Analyzer) was delivered to Autostrade, in Italy, in 1984. Today, over 75 agencies in 15 countries use ARAN's state-of-the-art technologies to increase the cost effectiveness of their data collection activities. As well as Ground Penetrating Radar the DCL ARAN records:
• profile/roughness in both wheelpaths.
• 1200 point transverse profile over 4.0m using the specially developed high frequency INO system.
• gradient.
• crossfall.
• curvature.
• pavement texture in nearside, offside, or centre wheelpath positions
• cracking using the established Wisecrax system. (Cracking recorded automatically in lane wheeltrack and edge positions)
• Trimble GPS coordinates with an Applanix POS-LV420 inertial correction system
• panoramic right-of-way video with asset extraction capability using Surveyor software.

Combined Scanner and GPR survey vehicle nears completion at the Roadware headquarters in Canada