Companies working with bulk materials often face inaccurate accounting when transporting sand, crushed stone, soil, ore, coal, biomass, and other cargo. The volume of material may be estimated visually, calculated using conventional coefficients, or determined by weight, which depends on the moisture content, density, and composition of the cargo.
As a result, discrepancies arise between the supplier, carrier, and customer: it becomes difficult to confirm the actual delivered volume, compare contractor performance, detect underloading or overloading, and obtain transparent analytics for sites and trips.
We developed a 3D scanner and platform that automatically processes the truck body profile, compares the empty and loaded states of the vehicle, and calculates the actual volume of material.
Each trip is recorded in the system as a separate entry, including the vehicle number, scan time, site, contractor, calculated volume, and visual loading profile.
A web dashboard was created for operators, allowing them to track current measurements and review disputed trips.
We were responsible for the system architecture design, development of the measurement methodology, the backend of the measurement system, the operator interface, and automation of selected production stages of the system.
As part of the project, we implemented:
— a 3D scanning module;
— processing of the 3D profile of the truck body and cargo;
— an algorithm for calculating the volume of bulk material;
— a database of vehicles and body types;
— a trip log with the full history of all measurements;
— an operator interface for scan monitoring;
— a system for automating software deployment during production of the measurement systems.
