- Crowdsourced mobile phone data creates map of road conditions in Melbourne.
- Quicker, cheaper and more up-to-date than current monitoring methods.
- Phones feed footage into a dedicated app.
A team of Monash University engineers in Australia have found a way to use smartphones to monitor roads and identify potholes - a cheaper, quicker alternative to current road survey methods.
The smartphone method doesn’t just detect bumps; cars feed footage into an app that builds a live map of road conditions across an entire city.
The Monash team, led by Dr Yihai Fang, at the ARC Smart Pavements Australia Research Collaboration (SPARC) hub, has already trialled crowdsourcing with 22 student drivers sharing data from their phones. They now hope to expand the project in partnership with road authorities.
“The more data we get from different vehicles, phones and road conditions, the stronger the system becomes,” says Fang.
“This could one day help create a city-wide road health map powered by everyday drivers.”
Dr Fang said around 25 vehicles were fitted with smartphones and driven along Melbourne roads over two months. The team used different types of cars and phone positions to mimic real-world conditions.
“Our research shows that smartphones, supported by deep learning models, can reliably capture road roughness data across different vehicles and mounting positions,” says Fang.
Road authorities currently use specialised survey trucks fitted with laser equipment to monitor road conditions. These provide accurate results but are costly and usually only deployed once or twice a year.
“By using cars that are already on the road, we can make monitoring more frequent and responsive. This could help spot problems earlier, before they turn into costly repairs,” Dr Fang said.
You can read the research paper here.