It's just after midnight and trucks loaded with excavated rock from the ongoing metro expansion are rolling into NCC Industry's site just outside Stockholm. Every truckload is weighed in, photographed, and registered by the driver - and for some time now analyzed with the help of AI. At the four sites where the technology is used, invoicing has increased significantly.

“For years we have had issues with detecting loads containing single boulders. Rock that is so large that it must be processed and fractured into smaller pieces before it can be put into the crushing machine, which means additional costs for us”, explains Area Manager East Stefan Westlén.

“An increased dialogue with our customer of how we can help to solve their problems is only good.”, The metro extension in Stockholm is a good example of a narrow workplace where the customer quickly and smoothly needs to get rid of blasted rock to be able to continue working.”

Existing technology adapted to our need

The manual handling where the driver weighs and registers the load himself means that there could be errors – unknowingly or deliberately, and that NCC loses revenue.

Pauline Broberg, at NCC Industry's customer center in Borås identified significant potential for improvement in the intake process. Niklas Bruske, who works with IT development, suggested to use the data in the form of photos from the Viktoria weighing system.

The technology to detect boulders is based on recognition of data that is registered at weigh-in.

"We have started from existing technology from Microsoft, which we have adapted to our needs. The result was the AI-robot "Allan Ivrig", which has been trained to identify so-called boulders. It has been fun and very good cooperation with the colleagues at the customer center and two sites where we tested the technique”, says Niklas Bruske.

"Now we can check all the loads, which we couldn't do before. To continue training "Allan Ivrig" we carry out a manual check of the deviation report we receive every morning. The data we receive means that we can invoice for loads containing boulders that is not actively registered," says Pauline Broberg.

Customer dialogue on new perspectives of aggregates and costs 

The technique brings a new perspective of aggregates and costs, and a need of an increased dialogue with the customers.

“Our customer knows that boulders are more costly to manage, but they are not used to be invoiced for the cost for a load containing single boulders. When we explain why we do this, it is normally not any problems”, says Pauline Broberg.

“The technique is ready to be used widely, but it requires investment and decisions on how to develop it and to better understand how we manage the data we receive, to really be able to make informed decisions”, Stefan Westlén summarize.

AI Cargo Vision, Boulder detection

Cargo Vision identifies incoming stone material by sending scale-captured images to a custom-trained model to check for boulders. It captures all incoming transactions that have been registered as either boulders or blasted rocks.

The project started in 2021, with a pilot in 2023/2024. Today, four sites in Stockholm (Barkarby, Älvnäs, Vårby, Rydbo) use this technology.

  • Uses Microsoft machine learning.
  • Integrated with Viktoria and Dynamics* workflow, capturing transactions as boulders or blasted rocks.
  • Standardized camera placement at weight terminals (12 meters up, centered above the flatbed).
  • Prepares images for AI analysis by adjusting colors and cropping.
  • AI provides a certainty level for boulders, documented.
  • Customer center reviews and adjusts as needed.
  • Customer center’s assessments are used for further AI training and evaluation.

* Viktoria is a system for outbound and inbound delivery via scale at the site. Viktoria include self-service and also offer camera surveillance to have track on the products and license plate. All invoicing is handled through Dynamcis.

Boulders

Boulders is rock that is so large that it must be processed and fractured into smaller pieces before it can be put into the crushing machine, which means additional costs. Excavated rock is rock material that comes from blasting work, for example, roads, trains and sewage tunnels.

The quantities of stone unloaded daily at NCC's sites in the Stockholm area alone count to 10,000 tons.