Tiny Surveyor robot massively speeds up Brynderwyn Hills road works

One little machine stole the spotlight during recent road works on State Highway 1 over the Brynderwyn Hills.

Among the big rollers and paving machines Fulton Hogan staff used to resurface SH1, they also deployed a nifty little gadget called the Tiny Surveyor.

The GPS-guided robot pre-marks lines for line marking and is operated remotely by tablet. The surveyor drives itself along the route, spray-painting markings as it goes.

A New Zealand Land Transport Agency (NZTA) Waka Kotahi spokesperson said Tiny Surveyor saves time as it is about five times faster than laying out lines in the traditional way.

The gadget also keeps staff safer on work sites as it negates the need to go near heavy machinery.

The robots, priced at about $50,000, are the brainchild of a Danish company TinyMobileRobots and exclusively distributed in NZ by Aptella.

National manager Joel Smith said the devices have been a popular choice by major road contracting companies and have markedly reduced the need for cumbersome traffic management systems that would normally be required if a human surveyor were walking the road.

Fulton Hogan Northland regional manager Mark Bond said the company has been proudly using three of the robots across several of its major projects.

The primary functions of the robots are to mark out paving runs and line markings, with robotic total station support ensuring centimetre-level accuracy.

“Our first robot was introduced approximately five years ago and has since played a critical role in projects such as Stage 1 of Papakura to Drury," Bond said.

He explained that each robot was provided without GPS functionality, which allowed Fulton Hogan’s specialist survey teams across Canterbury, Ō Mahurangi, and Papakura to Drury to fit and configure their own GPS units “ensuring highly accurate set out data on every job”.

The Tiny Surveyor in action, laying out a GPS-perfect path for road markers to follow. Photo / supplied

“The adoption of Tiny Surveyor technology has delivered significant improvements in efficiency and safety, particularly by reducing the need for surveyors to be physically present on busy sites and during lengthy motorway closures like those at the Brynderwyns,” Bond said.

According to TinyMobileRobots’ website, it began in 2015 with a handful of dedicated engineers and talented entrepreneurs who took an innovative yet unrefined research project from a Danish university and transformed it into a successful line of robots.

TinyMobileRobots now has a team of more than 100 dedicated professionals across the globe.

Its headquarters and production facility is in Denmark’s second largest city, Aarhus.

The company also had a United States office in Atalanta, Georgia, and subsidiary companies in Central Europe and the Pacific region.

Earlier this year the Advocate featured another new piece of roading technology - a high-tech pothole repair machine called the Multipatcher, in used by Fulton Hogan since January 2024 and said to have since repaired at least 11% of the region’s potholes.

Sarah Curtis is a news reporter for the Northern Advocate, focusing on a wide range of issues. She has nearly 20 years’ experience in journalism, most of which she spent court reporting in Gisborne and on the East Coast.