RoadPhone: timely road pavement assessment, maintenance and risk mitigation

In Ireland and around the world, thousands of kilometres of road pavement inevitably deteriorate with time and require regular surveys. Conventionally, road surveying relies on designated vehicles equipped with specialised sensors running over the whole road network on a multiannual basis. These surveying methods, however, are prohibitively expensive for more frequent road pavement monitoring on a monthly/quarterly basis, which is essential for timely road maintenance and risk mitigation (e.g., subsidence, extreme weather). Hence, a novel method is highly desired for more frequent road pavement monitoring to mitigate the risk of cascading road failure and reduce road repair costs whilst improving transportation safety, economic efficiency, and sustainability.

This project will develop a new low-cost sensing technology for semi-live road pavement monitoring using smartphones installed in university shuttle buses. Technically, road surface defects may cause vehicle ‘bumping’. The induced-vibration can then be captured by accelerometer and gyroscope sensors embedded in smartphones, together with satellite navigation location coordinates. The smartphone data gathered will be analysed using cutting-edge machine learning algorithms to detect road pavement defects at the community level (road network between UCC campuses) for the very first time in the world. The resulting maps will facilitate more timely road maintenance by stakeholders than could previously be undertaken.