Our team has discovered a solution for prompt detection of dangerous road defects.
Road surface defects that are not clearly visible cause the most problems. A driver might slow down or swerve to avoid a large pothole, but the less obvious potholes or bumps in the road at higher vehicle speeds damage the vehicle's suspension.
In solving this problem, we have developed a method for evaluating whether a pothole is 'problematic'. We have created a device that detects when the vehicle hits a pothole, assesses the severity of damage to the road surface and puts a mark on a map of where the pothole has been detected.
The speciality of our device is that the road sections will be analysed many times, each time a vehicle passes over each particular pothole, information on it will accumulate. The operator can then see this pothole on a video recording made by the device.
If the operator sees on the map and on the video that the pothole is dangerous, he can react quickly by instructing the appropriate services to carry out roadworks, which can prevent vehicles from breaking down and save drivers' nerves.
The device can be installed on any vehicle, such as a service vehicle or a city bus. The vehicle can go about its normal, routine tasks while the unit picks up information about road problems along the way.
It is often impossible to get quickly information about events on the road without an on-site team. Live monitoring by means of devices mounted on vehicles is useful for checking snow removal from roads, traffic jams or getting a "picture" of an accident scene and so on. Our system allows the operator to see a section of road without having to leave his office.
The operator can set a task to record a section of road, after which the video will be captured and sent by units that will visit the requested section.
Currently repair planning is done manually - technicians have to go to a given road section and manually measure the potholes to produce a detailed report of the area and location of the potholes. We have worked to automate this job.
All the operator has to do is obtain a video of the area using our device. Using automated tools, he will then be able to calculate the actual area of pits and cracks captured on the video. From these calculations an estimate of the amount of asphalt or material needed can then be automatically generated.
Once the operator has calculated a section of road, the program will generate a report that contains all the data about each pothole and crack in that section, their location in km +, their areas, and so on. This report is a DOCX file in which the operator can enter any comments or instructions he wants, and then send it to the maintenance department.
The device and tools have been developed in cooperation with road authorities. The system helps to solve tasks related to road maintenance and repair using more advanced digitalisation methods.
Since development has been carried out in close cooperation with both road administration and road operators, the product is broadly in line with current trends in this field, enabling the implementation of these tools without fundamentally altering existing systems.
Thus, this product can make a qualitative contribution to the road construction industry, raise productivity, efficiency of work performance and quality to a higher level.
This development makes use of intellectual property owned by our team.
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