Road Quality Monitoring Using Accelerometer And Global Positioning System(GPS)
Pakistan is bracing for tens of billions of dollars investment to develop road network under CPEC. Currently, we do not have any capacity to monitor road quality in an efficient and cost-effective way. In this project, we develop a product based on high quality sensors and GPS that will be able
2025-06-28 16:34:50 - Adil Khan
Road Quality Monitoring Using Accelerometer And Global Positioning System(GPS)
Project Area of Specialization Internet of ThingsProject SummaryPakistan is bracing for tens of billions of dollars investment to develop road network under CPEC. Currently, we do not have any capacity to monitor road quality in an efficient and cost-effective way. In this project, we develop a product based on high quality sensors and GPS that will be able to determine the road roughness as required by International standards.
The surface roughness of a road is an essential characteristic and a quality metric. This attribute is used to determine the road quality and comfort level for a passenger traveling on that road. Monitoring methods for road roughness in Pakistan are highly inefficient and expensive.
We focus on determining International Roughness Index (IRI), as it is the most widely used index for measuring road roughness. It has been proposed by the World Bank and used both in developed and developing countries. IRI values are measured in meter/km and mm/m units. It tells us about the quality of a road: lower the value of IRI means higher is the quality of road.
To compute IRI, two things are required: First is the accumulative vertical displacement (resulting from rough road) and secondly, the overall distance traveled by the vehicle. The accumulative vertical displacement value can be derived from the data coming from accelerometer sensors, while the overall travel distance can be determined using GPS sensors. These two kinds of sensors are available in sensor tags. This makes sensor Tags promising and cutting-edge technology for measuring road roughness.
First, we analyze the computing model of road roughness and derive the parameters of the IRI with sensor Tag CC2650. The CC2650 SensorTag operates as a Bluetooth low energy (BLE) peripheral slave device. These sensor tags are mounted on passenger vehicles. In addition, we are developing an android/iOS application which connects mobile phones to sensor Tags, fetch accelerometer data from it via Bluetooth low energy, appends its own GPS coordinates to the data and sends it to Amazon cloud service (AWS) cloud in real time.
Main purpose of the project is to develop a product that can determine the IRI of roads very accurately. This project also incorporates a cloud-based software system. This database will include the past history of roads. The system can then be used to generate reports for Public agencies like NHA and FWO or funding authorities like ADB, World bank or CPEC evaluators.
Project ObjectivesConsidering the old, manual and prone-to-corruption methods to measure road roughness in Pakistan, there should be a cost-effective methods in place with cutting edge technologies to do the road monitoring in an efficient way. Real time data monitoring and analysis to ensure transparency in road surface monitoring, so objectives of this project are as under:
a) Device should be able to monitor and measure road roughness and quality accurately.
b) System should be cost-effective and efficient. Overall method should be user friendly and easy to use.
c) Send data directly to the cloud and eliminating human involvement in data collection to ensure transparency in the system.
d) Device should be able to determine IRI (International Roughness Index) accurately.
Project Implementation MethodMethodology:
Our application connects the sensor tag to the Bluetooth of a Cell phone device and fetch accelerometer data via BLE (Bluetooth low energy). The app running on a cell phone then appends its own GPS data and send that data to AWS (Amazon Web Services) cloud in real time. From AWS data is sent to our “dashboard” where data is analyzed and IRI is calculated. We are using Bluetooth protocol for fetching data in cloud. IRI is the evaluating indicator of road roughness.
Calculating the Travel Distance:
The travel distance can be computed by summing-up the distances between every two adjacent points. The distance between two sampling points can be calculated approximately using the Haversine formula.
Obtaining Vertical Displacement:
The accelerometer available on sensor-tag is a 3-axis (x, y and z-axis) accelerometer. However, we need the data of only z-axis to determine the vertical displacement. For this purpose, the accelerometer data is converted to displacement by taking a double integration of it. First integration of acceleration generates the velocity and the subsequent integration gives the displacement.
Sensor Tags can be used to measure the surface roughness of roads as well as to identify potholes and humps along the roads. This approach is especially useful as it has very low cost and is totally free from human involvement of data collection thus ensuring transparency.
Billions of dollars are currently being invested for CPEC (China Pakistan economic corridor) particularly in developing road infrastructure. We need cutting-edge and cost-effective methods to monitor the quality of roads. NHA and other agencies lack these IoT based sophisticated methods and equipment to carry out road surveys, so we are developing a real time device to monitor quality of roads in Pakistan that is cost efficient. It collects as well as send the data on cloud and also compute data analysis. It brings transparency in Pakistan road monitoring system. Use of latest technology contributes more towards accuracy of data.
Many countries have developed Pavement Management System (PMS) according to their need. In Pakistan dipstick profilometers are used, they are very slow. Another type is laser based profilometer that are very expensive and NHA has only one, it cost them 45 million PKR in 2008. KP has one laser profilometer. Therefore, existing measuring methods are either very expensive, or old fashioned and time consuming. As these methods do not provide real time data therefore they are prone to corruption which is currently one of the major issues in Pakistan. At present, technology involves more and more sensors (e.g., Global Positioning System (GPS) and accelerometers). These sensors can potentially provide some necessary data to estimate road surface roughness. Additionally, no specialized staff is required to do the road survey. Common people riding in their cars, can collect data if tags are mounted inside their cars. Thus cost is further cut down.
Technical Details of Final DeliverableThe final deliverables will include a set of hardware, software and apps. The hardware will consist of sensor tags that will be mounted on the chassis of cars to generate the road roughness data. The software will include dashboards for data analytics. Finally, the application running on cell phones will do the three jobs: Accelerometer data collection, integration of GPS data and thirdly to send data to online clouds for storage and analytics.
Final Deliverable of the Project HW/SW integrated systemType of Industry Transportation Technologies Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud InfrastructureSustainable Development Goals Decent Work and Economic Growth, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, Responsible Consumption and ProductionRequired Resources| Item Name | Type | No. of Units | Per Unit Cost (in Rs) | Total (in Rs) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total in (Rs) | 75690 | |||
| SimpleLink™ - CC2650STK | Equipment | 9 | 6410 | 57690 |
| 296-42039-ND CC-DEVPACK-DEBUG DEBUGGER FOR SENSORTAG | Equipment | 3 | 3000 | 9000 |
| shipping | Miscellaneous | 1 | 9000 | 9000 |