Ved Svinesund er Roadguard plassert ut for å måle mønsterdybde på bildekk som kjører over enheten.

New patent will make Norwegian winter roads safer

Every winter there are accidents with cars skidding off the road, often due to bad tires. How can you spot worn and bad tires?

The company Roadguard and inventors Wilhelm Stang and Josef Ellingsen have recently been granted a patent for a system and method for measuring tread depth on car tires that run over the device.

– Laser measurement itself is "old news." The challenge was how to make it work under fairly harsh conditions over a long period of time.

Joseph Ellingsen

Chief Scientific Officer at Roadguard

Josef Ellingsen, Chief Scientific Officer, Roadguard

Joseph Ellingsen

Chief Scientific Officer at Roadguard

So how do you protect small, precise measuring equipment from a harsh environment? An environment with snow, rain, dust, sand and, not least, vibrations and impacts from vehicles driving past at high speed.

When it comes to equipment that can register differences of a few tenths of a millimeter, there is zero tolerance for foreign objects.

After testing several possible solutions, they ended up with a constant airflow that keeps the equipment clean and always ready for use.

We could have gone for some form of washing, but then we would have had more mechanical, moving parts. If we have a system that degrades as soon as there is bad weather or a lot of traffic, it won't work. We can't just go and repair something that is down in the roadway, says Ellingsen.

The units are intended for busy roads. Roads that should preferably not be closed too often.

You can't dig into a busy highway to make repairs all the time. How you keep things clean is important, but also how you encapsulate it and how it stays functional over time,” says Stang.

Started by wanting to solve a problem

In the winter of 2020, the two founders of the company, Jesper von Zweigbergk and Wilhelm Stang, were sitting in a cabin talking. Eventually, the discussion turned to the topic of trucks that had run off the road. In several news articles they had read, worn or the wrong type of tires on slippery winter roads were highlighted as a major cause of accidents.

It started with us wanting to solve this traffic problem in some way. How we would solve it technically wasn't that important at the beginning,” says von Zweigbergk.

According to the Norwegian Public Roads Administration's in-depth analysis of fatal accidents in 2022, worn tires are one of the most common contributing technical causes of serious accidents on the roads.

A slightly different entrepreneurial journey

The two founders, Von Zweigbergk and Stang, both have a background in finance and investing in other companies. Here, they had been in contact with companies that used ultrasound for measurements in the oil and gas sector. They initially thought that this could be a possible lead.

– We have had a slightly different journey than many other startups. Many start with a technology background and a specific technology that they want to work on. Here are two economists who have set out a problem to solve. We didn't necessarily know how to solve it, but we wanted to solve it.

Christian Wilhelm Stang

Founder and Chairman, Roadguard

Christian Wilhelm Stang, gründer og styreleder i Roadguard

Christian Wilhelm Stang

Founder and Chairman, Roadguard

We tried and changed a lot during the process until we found something that worked, says Josef Ellingsen.

Ellingsen is listed as an inventor along with Stang. He was not involved in the company's start-up, but eventually joined Roadguard to provide technical expertise to the company.

Contacted IFE and SINTEF

Through contacts at the Institute of Energy Engineering (IFE), they were able to arrange a meeting where they presented the problem. There, they were able to devise several possible technical solutions, and had a further meeting with SINTEF. At the same time, Josef Ellingsen, who now holds the title of Chief Scientific Officer in the company, was contacted.

I initially thought it would be a relatively simple project, but there are many facets to this. It has become an extensive product development process with a total of 13 project participants, several of whom have doctorates.

Senior engineer at the Norwegian Industrial Property Office, Elen Brendeford, believes it is important for companies to secure the rights to their innovations.

As the inventors themselves describe, it has taken time and required more human resources from various research environments to arrive at a robust technical solution to the problem. Technical solutions that are demanding to develop, but easy to copy once the solution is known, are important to secure commercial rights to, says Brendeford.

Does not only apply to heavy transport in winter

Although there are most tire-related accidents in the winter and there are most news reports about foreign trucks, Stang believes that such accidents are not just a winter problem or only apply to heavy transport.

It is also slippery when it rains, and there are many passenger cars with worn and bad tires, so this is a year-round problem.

Tested in Hamar and Svinesund

The actual development has largely taken place outdoors on busy roads. First on a not very busy road outside Hamar, and then at the E6 border crossing at Svinesund.

At Svinesund, a unit has been placed at the entrance to the customs station. Around 1,600 trucks drive over the unit every day.

We have had continuous operation and measurements there since May. The only downtime was when the power went out at the entire customs facility, says Ellingsen.

Roadguard recently signed a commercial sales and maintenance agreement with the Norwegian Public Roads Administration for implementation of the product.

Now our commercial journey begins and we look forward to rolling out the system throughout Norway, says von Zweigbergk.

Jesper von Zweigbergk, gründer og CEO i Roadguard.
Jesper von Zweigbergk, founder and CEO of Roadguard

Will also sell data

In addition to producing and selling the measurement units themselves, Roadguard envisions being able to sell measurement data to various players.

Knowing the status of tires and wear is information that can be useful for fleet management and maintenance planning in, for example, logistics companies. One could also think that it could be useful information for calculating insurance premiums,” says von Zweigbergk.

In connection with the unit at Svinesund, a camera with license plate recognition has been installed. This data connects the Norwegian Public Roads Administration so that it is possible to identify which vehicles have been measured and which may have insufficient tread depth on their tires.

If Roadguard is to sell its data, there are several privacy concerns that must be taken into account. Von Zweigbergk believes that this has already been addressed.

Another area the entrepreneurs envision the data could be used in is research into microplastic emissions.

Much of the microplastic in nature comes from car tires. There are few good measurement methods to determine whether new or old tires release the most rubber into the environment, or how quickly different tire types wear out under proper use.

If we compare our data with information about the chemical content of the rubber in the different tires, we can find out more about this pollution and who is releasing what. This can also benefit tire manufacturers,” says von Zweigbergk.

Brendeford believes it is good that the company sees more opportunities to utilize its technology.

This invention is a good example of a sustainable innovation that contributes to better resource efficiency by quickly detecting worn tires, while at the same time improving the environment by providing us with knowledge about the release of microplastics. Norway needs more of such socially beneficial inventions, says Elen Brendeford.

The way forward

Although Roadguard is initially concentrating on getting a working product in Norway and deploying measurement units in several places in the country, they want to look beyond in the long term.

Von Zweigbergk highlights that they are developing this under Nordic conditions as an important argument also when it comes to sales abroad.

The fact that the Norwegian Public Roads Administration says that this works in Norway under the conditions here is really all we need to market this to other countries. Make it there and you'll make it anywhere.

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