Built to save lives, an Australian made innovation has made a key element of roadside traffic control work a lot safer on Aussie roads.
According to National Road Safety, each year one traffic controller is killed on our roads and 100 are injured, requiring medical treatment or time off work.
Tragedies like these are preventable, cue the world’s first Australian built Automated Cone Truck (ACT), developed by Brisbane’s Arrowes Roading Safety.
Arrowes executive director, Lea Ea initiated the ACT development to find a solution to decrease the alarming number of fatalities and serious injuries among traffic controllers, while also reducing manual handling and traffic set-up times.
Lea says these numbers must go down, as every life lost is one too many.
“Research by Safe Work Australia found 63 per cent of fatalities on worksites were caused by being hit by moving vehicles,” she says.
The seed for the ACT was planted in 2014 with the development of the eSTOP, a portable traffic signal system designed to replace traditional traffic controllers who often worked in risky conditions.
This innovative vision was born from tragedy, ignited by an accident involving a former member of parliament, who lost his wife who was working as a traffic controller.
Lea says the eSTOP was a game changer, allowing traffic workers to do their job remotely, away from the road.
“We transformed the traffic lantern into a portable that could be remotely controlled by a traffic controller, instead of someone standing in the middle of road with a stop sign,” she says.
“The worker is able to control the traffic from a distance, which led to saving lives.”
In 2018, a phone call highlighted its impact, the equipment had done its job and saved someone’s life, which sparked a whole journey of innovation and the seed that became the Automated Cone Truck.
The ACT is an Isuzu 140/120-260 Auto LWB and was built to be used easily by the drivers, who only have to program the spacing between each cone that can be deployed every seven seconds placed at intervals of three to 24 metres while travelling at speeds of up to 16 kilometres an hour.
“In terms of the mechanics behind it, the user has nothing to do with it, but from a development point of view we have made it so simple,” she says.
‘We want it to eliminate the number of moving components, and this is important because we want longevity of use and not constant mechanical issues that would result in us having to maintain it constantly.”
Mechanically, this is how the system works:
The gantry system picks up three cones at a time, placing them on the conveyor which will move left or right, depending on whether the operator wants to drop the cones on the left or right side of the truck.
There are two grippers on either side and depending on which one you’re deploying, it will grip the cone from the conveyor and place it on the road.
Lea explains the evolution of the ACT, with the development of the truck held in their workshop, everything had worked perfectly, until the trial in 2020 when the grippers slipped.
“The environment was very different compared to a workshop environment as we now had the debris, dust, oil, wet weather and all the greases, so it slipped through,” she says.
“We watered down the grippers with a hose, and nothing happened, but in the trial, it slipped, so we improved on that, and we spent quite a lot of time refining the gripper, so now it’s 100 per cent.”
“It’s got two gripping systems at the top and middle now, therefore there’s no slippage anymore.”
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The team sought feedback from end users on how they used the trucking system, as well as the Human Machine Interface (HMI) which also had to be modified.
“We learnt a lot about what it’s like to sit in the truck, thinking about how truckies actually use the system in a real-life environment which gave us a lot of insight.”
“We spent two years after that refining and developing, trialling and testing it before we could commercially sell it.”
When OwnerDriver asked the impact the ACT will have on the community, Lea listed reason upon reason.
“Thanks to this project, we’ve learnt that they’ve eliminated 1,200 tonnes of manual handling from just one project,” she says,
“You can imagine what that means from a manual handling in long term injury point of view, like arthritis or back strains.”
The project has not only improved safety but also demonstrates Australia’s capability in innovation and manufacturing.
As a small business, Lea says her team took on the project to show Australia’s capabilities.
“We don’t want to be like every other company that says, ‘I’ve got a problem, let’s look overseas and find a solution. We said, there’s a problem and we want to solve it, so why don’t we develop it, show our capability and then export it,” she says.
Before her job at Arrowes, Lea was working in Singapore for 16 years, supplying to 24 countries around the world.
“When I came back to Australia and started working, I realised that we don’t have any manufacturing here and I was quite disappointed.”
“We don’t do value creation, so for me to be able to showcase our capability and our relevance, and to be able to innovate, produce, create this kind of value, was actually important for me, it was amazing.”
“I had these guys coming up to me saying Lea, we wouldn’t have this opportunity to have this amount of hands-on development and to explore, research and develop it in Australia, the way it has been.
“So, we lose a lot of talent and capabilities because we don’t offer this kind of opportunity locally, everyone sources it overseas to get this kind of opportunity.
“And the reason why we develop it is because of the casualties and the fatalities on the road.”
According to the Australian National University, in 2017 alone, road fatalities cost the Australian economy $33 billion, with each fatality potentially costing $7.8 million in taxpayer money.
The ACT hasn’t gone without recognition, winning the Victorian Major Transport Infrastructure Authority’s award for innovation and the Director General Award for Safety innovations in 2022, as well as the National Safety Award (NSCA) in 2023.
The ACT is also a finalist in Moreton Bay City Council Business & Innovations Awards for 2024.
“It’s important for us to have that recognition, it’s affirming, and we all need that confirmation,” Lea says. “We believe in what we do, but to be recognised by the community is another level. It’s the satisfaction, the reward you feel because of your hard work.”
“We knew we had a purpose. We knew we would be making a difference but doing so and then getting recognition for it that is very satisfying and encourages us to continue to develop.”
Lea says the ACT won’t stop revolutionising and work will continuously be made to improve it.
“The iPhone was big and heavy in the 90s. Thirty years on, it’s smaller and more intelligent, we envision the automated cone truck will also revolutionise this way.”
Looking ahead, Arrowes is not resting on its laurels. The next project, named ASSIST (Arrowes Smart Interactive Safety Technology), promises to further revolutionise safety with advanced features like speed alerts for road workers and hazard detection in blind spots. This new initiative aims to build on the lessons learned from the ACT, pushing the boundaries of road safety technology.
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