Report
Teaser, summary, work performed and final results
Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ECOMARK (An ecological road striping system)
Teaser
Despite significant progress in reducing traffic accidents, more than 27,000 people die every year and a relevant amount of public money is spent on managing the consequences of these accidents. Improving horizontal road stripes would be one solution for enhancing road safety...
Summary
Despite significant progress in reducing traffic accidents, more than 27,000 people die every year and a relevant amount of public money is spent on managing the consequences of these accidents. Improving horizontal road stripes would be one solution for enhancing road safety. Unfortunately the quality of road stripes in Europe is gradually decreasing due to a reduction in the funds available for maintaining it.
The goal of our project is to develop a new, fully electric road striper for outdoor use. The machine will be able to paint horizontal road stripes offering higher performance at a lower cost. The new machine will make the following possible:
- up to 50% lower cost of applying horizontal stripes, with benefits to the budgets of the agencies responsible for the stripes;
- ability to apply horizontal road stripes in urban centres at night, since the machine is fully electric and does not produce annoying noise;
- elimination of the negative effects on workers\' health that are caused by the release of paint particles, vibration, noise and exhaust fumes.
Work performed
The feasibility study allowed to identify, dimension and design all the road-striper components, included the batteries, and to understand the better configuration to be adopted to achieve the performance targets.
The freedom to operate analysis has determined that there are not patent documents that may restrict the freedom of implementation of the invention.
Different typologies of risks have been identified, analysed, ranked, and, for each of them, a mitigation measure has been proposed.
The business planning has allowed us to identify all the economic variables involved in our project and the required investments. The forecasts developed in the business plan are positive, therefore they encourage us to continue the project.
Final results
Our road-striper will be zero-emission and it can bring the following advantages:
- creation of self-cleaning horizontal road stripes with at least 50% longer durability than current stripes and with improved retroreflection;
- 50% decrease in the operator time required for applying the stripe, with consequent savings in operating costs;
- 90% reduction in the amount of energy necessary for operating the machines;
- road-striper noise level does not exceed 30 dB during operation (current road stripers reach and exceed 65 dB);
- total elimination of vibration.