The City will be actively using ‘smart technology’ this fall to undertake its annual sidewalk inspections. Before this new innovative technology, sidewalks, required by the Province to be inspected annually, were labour intensive and took a significant amount of time.

This year the City has partnered with Top Hat Robotics to utilize their sidewalk inspection technology for its annual inspections.

Top Hat Robotics is an innovative start-up located in Kitchener-Waterloo. They produce sidewalk robots for several work-related use-cases like detecting sidewalk deficiencies.

Top Hat Robotics will begin inspecting the sidewalks starting the week of September 8. Accompanying the robot will be a Top Hat Robotics employee who is happy to answer any questions.

Someone who has done these inspections for a different municipality suggested that a City public works employee could be tied up for weeks doing this kind of assessment, considering the number of sidewalks in Owen Sound. This technology would allow public works staff to be deployed to other tasks. How much data a human can collect versus the robot with sensors, what kind of data and and how accurate would be other considerations.

Municipalities are also required to do road inspections . Can we expect to see drones or autonomous vehicles for those inspections/

source: media release, City of Owen Sound and community sources