A Mobile Application for Road Surface Quality Control: UNIquALroad

Abstract

The monitoring of road surface conditions plays a key role in ensuring safety and comfort to the various road users, from pedestrians to drivers. Furthermore, having information on infrastructure quality allows road managers to guarantee an adequate maintenance. These data can be given and used at the same time by users, by means of mobile devices, widespread in Italy and in the World. The main aim of this paper is to realize a simple application, which can be installed on several devices (smartphone/tablet), that allows to use sensors piggybacked on them in order to monitor road surface quality. Experimental tests are carried out on urban roads of Calabria (Italy) to validate and test the mobile application. In particular, the accelerometer is used for detecting surface conditions, in terms of potholes and bumps. The Global Positioning System (GPS) is employed to know in real time the location of vehicles and of road surface anomalies. Five different devices were used, all placed in a test vehicle in three different placement conditions. For the validation process, only one device was used, completely bound in an utilitarian car. The algorithm developed to detect road bumps and potholes is based on the analysis of the acceleration signal in terms of high-energy events; three filters are applied on the original signal. Moreover, verification of the rate of false detections and undetected road anomalies is planned, using georeferenced photos that allow the correct localization on the map and the assessment of the correspondence between the elements, detected with the accelerometer, and real road conditions. The results obtained show that our application could be used as an useful automated sensing system for road quality.