Pothole Detection System using Mobile Phones

Abstract

For the development of any country, constructing quality roads is a key factor. When roads have potholes, travelling and transportation becomes a tedious task. It is a waste of time and money with the additional overhead of frequent maintenance needed for the vehicles. Fuel consumption also becomes notable factor in developing countries. If there is a way of alarming potholes on road surfaces to relevant authorities in an effective and efficient manner, maintenance would become a less tedious task which could be attended to by the level of priority needed. This will help road development authorities to avoid monitoring the roads constantly, whilst steering clear of installing dedicated sensor devices to monitor road conditions. The early identification of road conditions may help to repair them faster before the road condition goes beyond the acceptable level of deterioration. Along with the fast development of the telecommunications industry, people tend to use sophisticated mobile devices such as Android Smartphones. If these phone users can freely download and install an application on their mobile phone to detect potholes on roads that they travel, it would enable them notify road conditions to relevant authorities in automated manner and many people may wish to use it. Here, we made an attempt to detect potholes on road surfaces using Android based Smartphones with associated GPS location. We have implemented a fully functional software solution for collecting, transmitting, analyzing of data and displaying potholes on a web map where general public is able to search based on their custom selections.