Real time pothole detection using Android smartphones with accelerometers

The importance of the road infrastructure for the society could be compared with importance of blood vessels for humans. To ensure road surface quality it should be monitored continuously and repaired as necessary. The optimal distribution of resources for road repairs is possible providing the availability of comprehensive and objective real time data about the state of the roads. Participatory sensing is a promising approach for such data collection. The paper is describing a mobile sensing system for road irregularity detection using Android OS based smart-phones. Selected data processing algorithms are discussed and their evaluation presented with true positive rate as high as 90% using real world data. The optimal parameters for the algorithms are determined as well as recommendations for their application.