Systems and methods for virtually reconstructing a mission of a liquid-dispensing vehicle

Abstract

A liquid-dispensing vehicle, such as a water truck, may deliver water from a tank through spray heads to combat dust at a worksite during a mission. Operating in an environment with potentially low-bandwidth and intermittent communications, the vehicle periodically transmits timestamped data relating to a tank level, truck movement, and a binary status of the spray heads to an external computing system. The computing system virtually reconstructs the operation of the truck and treatment of the worksite by building timelines and coverage maps from the timestamped data. In generating a smoothed water-level timeline, the system identifies refilling sections, stable sections, and draining sections of the tank from the timestamped data and filters noisy water readings during the draining sections. An activity timeline identifies various truck activities during the watering mission, and a coverage map builds a two-dimensional rendering of water treatment on the worksite based on geometric patterns of the active spray heads, all of which may be used to evaluate the mission or to control future operation of the vehicle.