Development of Advanced Asphalt Finisher

More than half a century has passed since the asphalt finisher was developed. Over the years since that time, this machine has been made larger and the performance of its various parts has been improved, but its image as a complicated machine requiring many special skilled operators has not changed. The purpose of this paper is our development of an asphalt finisher in which the operations that required the experience and intuition of skilled operators in the past are performed automatically by various types of sensor and computers, creating a high value added machine which eliminates the previous three D’s (difficult, dirty, dangerous) image of the typical construction machine and in its place creates a new three C’s (clean, comfortable, creative) image while at the same time possessing the qualities of a user friendly machine through the use of robotics.