At the 2022 Megatrans exhibition there was one display that stood out amongst all the machinery and equipment, it was the AI Drive stand. The team had brought their technology game and used stadium sized screens to provide the attendees with a glimpse of their product’s capabilities.
The AI Drive system combines a number of different safety technologies into one platform to allow truck fleets to achieve a similar level of active safety technology that is now available on new cars that are five star ANCAP rated.
In a sea of telematics companies flogging their asset tracking capabilities and fancy information dashboards, I was intrigued to learn more about the benefits for Fleet Managers to combine multiple safety systems with artificial intelligence to make their fleet safer by using near misses to educate drivers.
Bojan Mitreski is the Founder of GoLive Monitoring business which has developed AI Drive and has been providing live video feeds to fleet customers since 2016. It’s been a journey for Mitreski and the team that started with a hardware installation business for other telematics providers, and evolved into sourcing their own hardware to provide live video monitoring.
“I was working on large installation projects, of 300-400 vehicles, and I saw the opportunity for video data because it was missing and could be quite important when reviewing an incident. I was speaking onsite with business owners and when an accident happened, a dot on the map was not enough for them but that was all GPS was giving them,” says Mitreski.
Mitreski noticed a shift in technology and hardware while touring the various exhibitions in China that was happening at the same time as telecommunications companies were shifting towards 4G and 5G platforms which would bring the costs of data and hardware down.
“I guess it’s the technology that made it cheaper, and the competition,” explains Mitreski. “I started looking at dash cameras so I was going through exhibitions in China several times a year. I got a product that gave me exclusive rights just for dash cameras. And that’s when it all started. Then I found another product, which is now the GoLive monitoring system.”
“While the cost of hardware reducing, there were lots of fleet management telematics providers offering products with tracking and reports. There was also seeing machines doing the fatigue detection, ADAS pedestrian detection and lane departure. And there was also software providers with the sign-on-glass shipping systems. All of these technologies were being installed by different people and some of the wiring in trucks looked like Christmas tree lights.”
“I had the idea to bring all of the technologies together into one piece of hardware and have one system that could be installed by one person to give consistency across a fleet. So after discussions with my partner Chris who does the software development for us, we found the right hardware provider and have been developing AI Drive for the last three years.”
AI Drive has now been officially launched and is being trialed with several fleets to make sure all of the hardware components integrate with the software that is developed in-house. It’s also an important stage for the AI technology to begin learning and adapting to the road conditions and driver behaviour.
Unlike image processing software which can identify pre-programmed objects, the software developed for AI Drive will learn with each new vehicle and driver to build a database of knowledge with each kilometre travelled. This will ensure the warnings and notifications are tailored and adapted to the operating conditions of the fleet.
“With the technology we’re building it will be flexible to adapt to the increasing safety needs of fleets, and create efficiencies for businesses,” sats Mitreski. “One recent example is pothole detection. Councils have been overwhelmed with the recent weather events so our AI system has learned to identify and map them using the existing camera hardware. Soon, we’ll use LIDAR technology to provide a 3D image that can be feed into asset management systems for planning road maintenance.”
