Advanced Driv­er Assis­tance Sys­tem for com­pact sweep­er­s

With Gareth Knopp, Inno­va­tion and Sim­u­la­tion Man­ag­er 
at Bucher Municipal, Dork­ing (Eng­land) 
and 
Julian Nordt, Prod­uct Man­ag­er Autonomous Com­pact Sweep­ers, 
Bucher Municipal, Berlin (Ger­many)

Gareth Knopp has been with Bucher Municipal for 18 years and has played a key role in devel­op­ing a range of munic­i­pal equip­ment. He is driv­en by a pas­sion for push­ing the bound­aries of what’s pos­si­ble to solve real-world prob­lems through tech­nol­o­gy, much like Julian Nordt, who is fas­ci­nat­ed by turn­ing ideas into tan­gi­ble, rel­e­vant results. Togeth­er with their teams of AI, soft­ware, mecha­tron­ics, and data engi­neers, they led the inte­gra­tion of Advanced Driv­er Assis­tance Sys­tems (ADAS) into Bucher’s com­pact sweep­ers, from con­cept to first deploy­ment in Solin­gen (Ger­many). The sys­tem auto­mat­i­cal­ly reg­u­lates the con­trol of the noz­zles and the fan. At the same time, it pre­vents col­li­sions, and more, while deliv­er­ing opti­mal clean­ing results, to the ben­e­fit of both the oper­a­tor and the city.

Tech­nis­che Betriebe Solin­gen: “Our oper­a­tors work in a vibrant urban envi­ron­ment, with all the sur­pris­es that brings, and are con­stant­ly mul­ti-task­ing. Find­ing some­thing that makes their work eas­i­er and safer was a wel­come oppor­tu­ni­ty.”

Gareth: “When we realised that Julian’s team had the plat­form and abil­i­ty, we saw the great oppor­tu­ni­ty to adapt the truck-mount­ed sweep­er sys­tem for use in a com­pact sweep­er with a dif­fer­ent chas­sis.”

Julian: “Spurred on by the chance to show live vehi­cles at IFAT, our teams quick­ly came togeth­er and shared their respec­tive exper­tise, Gareth’s team ini­tial­ly work­ing from Dork­ing and ours from Berlin, before con­tin­u­ing in the Berlin lab.”

Tech­nis­che Betriebe Solin­gen: “Seeing the ADAS-equipped com­pact sweep­er in action and hav­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expe­ri­ence it first-hand, we believe the sys­tem will reduce col­li­sions and improve our sweep­er oper­a­tors’ expe­ri­ence.”

Fol­low­ing the suc­cess­ful pub­lic launch at the IFAT trade fair in Munich (Ger­many) in May 2024, the city of Solin­gen is in the pro­cess of inte­grat­ing ADAS into its fleet of com­pact sweep­ers.

At the same time, Bucher Municipal in Dork­ing is con­duct­ing tests with a num­ber of select­ed cus­tomers across Europe to deter­mine how they can best ben­e­fit from this tech­no­log­i­cal break­through in the indus­try – always striv­ing to push the bound­aries of devel­op­ment in this fast-mov­ing field.