Paving the Way: How a Family Engineering Firm in Ohio Is Bringing Robotics to Road Repair
It started, fittingly, on the road.
One early October morning, as father-and-son engineering duo Todd Hendricks Sr. and Jr. drove from their homes near Toledo to their shop in Pioneer, OH, they passed a familiar scene: a massive highway crack-sealing crew. Eight trucks, a dozen workers, and one guy slowly trailing behind, filling cracks with a wand.
“There had to be a better way,” Todd Jr. said. And with that, the idea for Robotic Maintenance Vehicles (RMV) was born.
That flash of inspiration quickly turned into sketches, prototypes, and now a fully operational robotic platform that promises to transform how road maintenance is done. RMV’s first product is a truck-mounted robot that automatically detects and seals pavement cracks—reducing labor, improving safety, and cutting costs.
A New Company
“In our family business, we design and build custom automation,” said Todd Jr., now President of RMV. “RMV is a modular platform for robotic road maintenance. The Robotic Crack Sealer is the first module available for the RMV, with future maintenance modules in development.”
At the core of RMV is a FANUC industrial robot paired with a custom vision system that detects and maps pavement cracks in real-time. The system doesn’t just seal, it evaluates the size of each crack (from one-quarter to one-and-a-half inches wide), determines whether the crack meets state sealing specs, and then calculates the exact amount of material needed for each specific crack.
All of this happens as the truck slowly creeps along the road with higher precision, significant material savings, and a dramatic reduction in labor and risk.
“We’re working with the same tools we have used in factories for years—robotics, line-tracking, real-time object recognition, and spatial mapping—but now applying them to the open road. This technology makes it easy, ergonomic, and safer to fill cracks,” said Todd Sr.
Safer, Smarter, and Ready to Scale
“We feel this opportunity is huge,” Todd Jr said. “This is going to explode when the departments of transportation (DOTs) start using these trucks. It could be as many as a dozen trucks per state, plus contractors and military projects, and the miles of runways and taxiways that airport entities maintain.”
RMV’s modular robotic platform is designed to scale, and crack-sealing is just the beginning. RMV is developing robotic solutions for other hazardous highway tasks, like cone placement, pothole filling, and traffic control, such as flagging. Their broader vision is a mobile, self-contained, and robotic work zone that travels with the work being done, improves safety, and reduces disruption to traffic.
It’s not just about innovation, it’s about impact.
“There are over 100,000 work zone crashes every year in the U.S., and on average about 100 worker deaths,” said Todd Sr. “If this machine saves even one life, it’s worth it.”
Data-driven Decisions—and Real Accountability
Each RMV truck doesn’t just work. It reports. From GPS coordinates to material usage, to linear feet sealed and pothole locations, every job creates a detailed digital record that the DOTs can use to track road quality and optimize maintenance.
“There is no data like this today. Ours is a totally different method with complete accountability,” Todd Jr. said.
A Clear Road Ahead
Through their strategic partnership with SealMaster, a well-known name in highway maintenance, and the support from Rev1’s venture development program, RMV is already in motion. The company is attracting early adopters with a working product and a business model that carries them well into the future of automated highway maintenance and construction.
“We’ve always known automation and robotics,” said Todd Jr. “Now we know road maintenance, too. And we’re just getting started.”
