Recently, the National Science and Technology Awards Conference was held in Beijing. The project "Multi-source Collaborative Intelligent Inspection Technology and Equipment Development for Roads and Bridges," jointly developed by Xuzhou XCMG Truck-mounted Crane Co., Ltd., won the second prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award, making it the only enterprise in the construction machinery industry to win an award this year.

By the end of 2017, China had a total of 832,500 bridges. Many bridges are aging and their service conditions are deteriorating, which will also lead to an increasing number of safety accidents. As specialized equipment that embodies the mechanization and modernization of bridge inspection, maintenance, and repair construction, bridge inspection vehicles play an irreplaceable role.

It is reported that the project focuses on solving the common problems of high-precision, high-efficiency, and highly reliable intelligent inspection of various bridges, and achieves superiority in the adaptability of extra-large bridges. At the same time, bridge inspection vehicles can integrate intelligent inspection equipment with inspection platforms. Through a series of technological innovations, bridge inspection vehicles have achieved key breakthroughs in ultra-large spans, lightweight truss booms, intelligent control, load control, and IoT informatization, all of which have passed national expert appraisal, obtained two patents, and reached the internationally leading level in overall technology, and have been widely applied.

The research and development of this award-winning project lasted 12 years, and a total of two major categories and 16 models of bridge inspection vehicles were developed, achieving industrialization, lightweight design, and intelligentization, and can meet the inspection needs of various bridges at home and abroad.

In 2018, the key technologies of the project were used for the opening acceptance of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, and in 2020 for the opening acceptance of the Shanghai-Suzhou-Nantong Yangtze River Rail-Road Bridge, providing high-precision bridge structure status data for the two bridges respectively and strong support for the final acceptance.

As international market demand for the products gradually increases, the international market has put forward higher requirements for the R&D team in terms of regulations, policies, and vehicle usage habits. In the project's internationalization journey, the XCMG bridge inspection vehicle R&D team actively responds to overseas market demands.

In the South Korean bridge inspection vehicle export project, South Korean regulations impose what can be described as stringent requirements on the product's overall dimensions and axle loads. The product height or width may not exceed the limit by even 1 millimeter, and the axle load may not exceed the limit by even 1 kilogram.

"European brands all say it is difficult. Can you do it?" the South Korean customer questioned. The R&D team did not avoid the challenge. At the beginning of the project, they arranged dedicated personnel to conduct market research in South Korea, repeatedly verified the plans, communicated with the South Korean customer at any time to improve the technical solution, and ultimately completed the product drawing design within an extremely short delivery period.

In the actual production and manufacturing process, a thorny problem arose again—the chassis height exceeded the height agreed in the technical agreement by about 40 millimeters, causing the overall vehicle height to exceed the limit set by South Korean regulations.

"The chassis height cannot be adjusted," the chassis company replied, which made everyone's mood sink for a moment, but they immediately encouraged each other and continued to repeatedly adjust the solution with the technical director of the South Korean customer, who was conducting final acceptance in China. Ultimately, by adjusting the vehicle's weight distribution, they effectively solved the problem while meeting the axle load requirements of each axle, allowing the product to pass acceptance smoothly and accumulating valuable solutions and experience for the subsequent development of international market products.

At present, the key technologies and series products of the project have been widely used in the construction and maintenance of various large and medium-sized bridges across the country, and have been sold in batches in South Korea, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and other countries and regions, realizing a major transformation of China's bridge inspection equipment from import to export.