Use of Connected Vehicles to Characterize Ride Quality

Abstract

The United States relies on the performance of more than 4 million miles of roadways to sustain its economic growth and to support the dynamic mobility needs of its growing population. The funding gap to build and maintain roadways is ever widening. Hence the continuous deterioration of roads from weathering and usage poses significant challenges. Transportation agencies measure ride quality as the primary indicator of roadway performance. The international roughness index is the prevalent measure of ride quality that agencies use to assess and forecast maintenance needs. Most jurisdictions use a laser-based inertial profiler to produce the index. However, technical, practical, and budget constraints preclude that use for some facility types, particularly local and unpaved roads that make up more than 90% of the road network in the United States. This study expands on previous work that developed a method to transform sensor data from many connected vehicles to characterize ride quality continuously, for all facility types and at any speed. The case studies used a certified and calibrated inertial profiler to produce the international roughness index. A smartphone aboard the inertial profiler produced simultaneously the roughness index of the connected vehicle method. The results validate the direct proportionality relationship between the inertial profiler and connected vehicle methods within a margin of error that diminished below 5% and 2% after 30 and 80 traversal samples, respectively.